Gardening

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.