Mulch the tree to help lock in soil moisture. The mulch should be about two inches deep and kept about five inches away from the trunk. Learn the best way to water your newly planted evergreen tree.
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Every week, several times a week. It can be alarming to see the tree you so lovingly planted start to turn yellow and you want to fix the problem before it goes beyond the point of no return.
All evergreen trees, including pine, spruce, arborvitae, laurel, and boxwood, drop 1 year worth of needles or leaves every year. This usually happens in late summer or early fall, during the same time deciduous trees are dropping their leaves. This is a normal process of shedding the least productive needles or leaves. Evergreen is simply a title that means that your tree does not drop all of its leaves every year.
These trees will live for decades, but each individual leaf or needle does not live for decades. Depending on the species, usually, evergreens will drop leaves or needles that are either 3,4, or 5 years old, every fall. When a plant shuts down evergreen foliage, the foliage will turn yellow then brown and drops off as the chlorophyll stops coloring it green. This can be the regular dropping of older foliage or it can be stress bringing on leaf needle drop.
The same holds true for all of the evergreens. Arborvitae, spruce, juniper, magnolia, boxwood, laurel. Needled and broadleaf evergreens. To determine if your tree is simply following a normal, natural process, or if it is stressed and needs help, there are several questions that need to be asked.
If this was planted this year, and it is not autumn, is most likely to be water stress. Either too much water, or too little. Too much is easy to spot, go over to the tree and touch the soil, is it damp even though the irrigation has not been on for a couple of hours? Been getting a lot of rain, every day or so, for over a week, with clay soil? Too wet. Touch the soil a couple of hours after irrigation and completely dry?
No rain for a while? Quickly draining soil? For conifers such as pine, spruce, fir, or arborvitae this may be a natural and healthy occurrence, but it depends. How do you tell the difference, and what should you do? Needlecast Picture above is a natural process for conifer trees pine, spruce, fir, or juniper. Conifers are not true evergreens, and must shed their needles to stay healthy.
This generally happens only in the fall and, while the trees look unhealthy, but there is no need for concern. It will only last a short while. That being said, the yellowing of needles should only occur on the inner portions of branches and not on the tips.
Yellowing at the tips may indicate the tree is suffering from sun scald, freeze damage or a possible pest attack. The extra needles could quickly load up with too much snow, causing torn and broken limbs. Again, this varies by species, but most Arizona evergreens have a similar needle-drop period. This same leaf drop is also witnessed on broadleaf evergreens like Red Tipped Photinias, Rhododendrons, and Euonymus pushing off older, damaged, or useless foliage this time of year.
It is essential to keep this leaf and needle-drop cleaned up for health and fire reasons. Diseases like molds and mildews are protected in winter by this leaf litter at the base of the plant and re-infect your shrubs next spring. Now, a few inches of needles around the bases of evergreen trees insulate the roots and reduce water needs for healthier plants, but more than that can cause a wildfire hazard in the landscape.
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