Have a longleaf pine I’ve been trying to grow in the SC Sandhills which has mostly been a trooper but suddenly a lot of the leaves turned brown and the remaining ones turned yellow. This is what also happened for the only other one on the property before it gave up and died very shortly thereafter the better part of a month ago.
Not sure what precisely is the cause but I imagine lacking water is the issue since we’re having very hot days and are still in a drought, although it weathered much more severe drought earlier this year no prob maybe the sheer heat pushes it over the edge. It was planted in the fall of last year so some but not a ton of time to build up the roots (which were also probably jacked up from curling around in a pot up until then anyway although I tried to gently break up the binding of the root ball to itself when I replanted it). I have been giving it supplemental water but if it’s doing this I imagine not enough.
Is it possible to bring a pine back from the brink when its already in this state by making sure it gets water every day or would you call it hopeless at this stage? Anyone have miracle stories? … if not, honestly I should try to get one of the plugs for it at a small stage if I need to try again so that it can grow the taproot properly instead of having to fix a messed up one… just sentimental because this is one of the first plants I tried to put in so I want to save it if I can but it’s following a trajectory I saw before.
It's a goner. Conifers like pines aren't as cavalier about shedding their leaves as broad-leafed trees are. So while those can sometimes recover from leaf dieback like this, a pine only looks like this when it's basically dead.
Some tips for the future: ensure soil around newly planted trees remains consistently moist during the first year, especially during hot weather. Remove plants and weeds around the base to avoid competition with roots. Replace with a thick layer of wood chip mulch to protect the soil from the elements.
Try to get better stock if you can. In my experience pines aren't great at recovering from malformed roots that grow in containers. This is one of the reasons people don't plant them too often anymore, since they're not very tolerant of modern nursery practices.
Yeah… I didn’t apply a mulch layer around it and I didn’t clear the competition around it unless it was approaching the height of the tree which were mistakes compounding on the root being messed up. Still watering it but I’m going start looking into where I can get a little one in a plug instead of a potted version. Apparently most plugs are bought in bulk with minimum orders of a few hundred or a thousand near me but I’m not looking for quite that many haha
edit: I can actually get individual ones for $3.50 apparently so that’s cool
You were right BTW, RIP pine tree
Sorry to hear that but yeah I was pretty confident, unfortunately. Hope the next one has better luck.
Feel free to tag me if you have more questions. Helping people care for young trees used to be my job.