Trees Turning Yellow

We are seeing a lot of Iron Chlorosis in Trees

Before you make that determination though, I want you to make sure you do the water probe check we've talked about on this blog. Is the tree getting dry at least once in a 10 day cycle or is it always extremely wet?

The problem with quick online diagnosis or taking a branch to a nursery or extension office, is the problem is often around the root base of the tree or from a landscape situation.

With that in mind; I want you to take all things into consideration over the past four to six months of what this tree has been experiencing in water, pesticide and weather related issues.

This is where most DIY folks look too hard for a quick answer. Take your time, trees are so slow to react that you have to take everything carefully into consideration. If you make snap diagnosis, or trust people who do, you will often do more harm than good.

If a "landscape professional" is quick to give you a cure by injection or some other costly sales approach, ask them for a money back guarantee on the work and this will often slow them down. If they know anything about tree treatments they will have to admit that it is very difficult to make a positive diagnosis and therefore very difficult to give a guarantee. That is the kind of honesty you want to hear before allowing someone to operate on your tree. If you do not think there has been any undue stress in these areas, then we can move onto Iron Chlorosis issues.

As the link talks about, the ph may be too high. However, those little $10 meters that claim to be able to read the ph are a joke. It takes very sophisticated equipment to accurately read ph, so only trust a soil sample test by the local extension office.

If it does come back with too high a ph, you can inject the tree with iron, but if it is later in the season you will get little results. This is where tree health care comes into play. You will have to start amending the soil around the tree early in the spring every year to try and lower that ph and any iron injections should be done in the early spring when the leaf is still forming. It's not a bad idea to start that process with a small amount of the supplement on the left of this blog now. The more in the spring time.

Trees will eventually decline and die if this is not remedied. Soil amendments will help, but remember, if anyone is selling a quick fix, trees don't do anything fast, so it may not be the best thing for the tree.