Help needed on Fern Pine (Podocarpus Grailior)

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Help needed on Fern Pine (Podocarpus Grailior)

Post by MorpheusPA » March 25th, 2022, 8:21 pm

Our plant friends sometimes do take a while to fully recover, so if they've plateaued but aren't looking bad, I wouldn't worry about it too terribly much. Continue to lightly feed, let them recover, and don't worry too much about new growth at this point. I have a young pomegranate tree that simply doesn't feel like growing much. I'm not rushing it.

te tat do
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Re: Help needed on Fern Pine (Podocarpus Grailior)

Post by te tat do » June 28th, 2022, 7:24 pm

So another update from my side. Of my 6 podocarpus trees. They were recovering from the shock of being planeted in Dec 2020. Finally after an entire year and a half, all 6 had recovered and were showing new growth. I have been super happy....... Recently (a month and a half or so ago) I also put in the fertilizer stakes from Jobe's. These are 16%-4%-4%. It seemed to help growth in that time.

These trees are planeted in heavy clay soil. My gardner dug a 4-5 foot deep hole about 4 feet wide and filled them with potting soil back in 2020. These are 24" box trees

I've been deep watering them with one of those deep watering wands, where I flood hole theyre planted in with water, once every week or two in the hot seasons. It's been working great for the last year and a half and the shocked trees had recovered nicely.

..... Well we had a very hot weekend and hot week in southern California this week and I had watered them early last week. Yesterday I noticed a couple of them are drying up and dropping leaves!!!!!

One of the trees leaves are dark green green and dead and falling off. The new growth on the tips of the branches is slowly turning brown and falling off. It seems to be starting at the bottom of the tree. The crown still has new light green growth.

The other tree, which is in a dryer part of my yard, seems to have leave turning light green/brown. (maybe over watering?!). It still has tons of new grown but the leaves near the trunk are turning light brown/yellow.

Is this just a normal pattern of these trees shedding leaves during the hot months or am I in danger here?!

Why do I have such bad luck with trees?!?



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redleader74
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Re: Help needed on Fern Pine (Podocarpus Grailior)

Post by redleader74 » June 28th, 2022, 7:56 pm

Hey glad to hear your update. Of my two fern pines that went into shock and nearly died back in April 2021, one is making a very good recovery (though not back to original) but the other suffered shock again as I forgot to water it before leaving fora one week vacation and a lof of the leaves died. That was about a month ago. However, in the one month since, I have heavily watered it and fertilized it and it looks to be making a slow but steady recovery. I don't think it's your bad luck necessarily, I'm finding that these trees can be very temperamental in hot/sunny weather. I just keep watering very regularly with a full soak (i.e., until i see water coming out of the bottom of the container.

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Help needed on Fern Pine (Podocarpus Grailior)

Post by MorpheusPA » July 2nd, 2022, 2:18 pm

That. I'd also suggest not using the plant spikes; they're not very good. They tend to dump concentrated fertilizer in one spot, and nothing everywhere else. What you can do is break them into bits and scatter around the tree, then water in.

Consistently slightly moist is the goal here. Which is not easy. I started with whips on some trees on my property, but Pennsylvania soils differ (I have 98% silt), so a deep watering means the soil stays wet for 2 weeks, then turns to a brick. On your soil--probably very sandy--water simply isn't going to stick around, so light but frequent is going to be the key.

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