I've been running into the weirdest three problems lately. I have two trees that are just dying on me. As you will see in the video they don't look good. The soil pH is 6 to 6.2 and I have given them a dose of iron and black cow. They're on an automatic watering system getting water daily. I've never had or seen this type of problem. Any ideas?
https://youtu.be/DhBJxdqlq_k

you prob don't need as much water, we have scaled back from watering daily to once a week if at all. But they look like normal winter death and summer growth. I wouldn't be that worried.

@roadkill

Any little holes on the dead branches? Might be an insect.

I hope its not anything in the soil. Definitely concerning that you had a tree there that died. If it’s fungi of some type that would be more difficult to treat. When you pulled up the old tree did you get all the roots up? Anything off about the roots, like smell or color?

Hopefully it is just some lingering cold damage. No matter what I would trim the dead parts down to where the branch is healthy.

No holes in the branches but there are some cracks in the bark. This is definitely not winter damage these branches are dying before my eyes from the tips slowly back to the trunk

Witnessed this horrific site too. I would cut it back and try and get ahead of the rot. I lost two in ground this way over the winter.

Each year I've lost at least 1 6 footer due to it appearing to rot from the buds right down the trunk.

I've been able to halt this by digging the trees up and letting them settle in a pot where I had a little more control over the variables (mainly water). letting them dry out between waterings really seemed to hault the damage. In another case I put it in a pot and soaked it in the pond for three months. Just pulled it out yesterday after witnessensing branch growth coming out of the root ball of a seemingly dead tree (all the bark scrapings were brown).

I have no idea what's actually causing it. It could be the fact that where I planted was within 30ft of a Brazilian pepper remants of when I first cleared that property or more likely some sort of fungi dampening off weakend plants. Scaling back the watering drastically has reveresed it for the most part for me but shit is it disheartening to witness. Kratom is a hard tree to propagate, and I'm always fearful that disease could wipe thru them all.


I also want to add that I've only had one tree I've left in ground actually come back from this. Dig it up and prune.

@roadkill

Any little holes on the dead branches? Might be an insect.

I hope its not anything in the soil. Definitely concerning that you had a tree there that died. If it’s fungi of some type that would be more difficult to treat. When you pulled up the old tree did you get all the roots up? Anything off about the roots, like smell or color?

Hopefully it is just some lingering cold damage. No matter what I would trim the dead parts down to where the branch is healthy.

Yep absolutely trim it down to where it's still plenty green.

Have any of you guys had any experience using copper as a fungicide? On large trees or cutting.