I have cedars all around my house (in B.C.). The cedars are already planted when I bought the house and they are around 10 feet high. They are very pretty, green and in good shape until a month ago after I did some landscaping around the cedars. I removed the grass around the cedars and apply wipe-out soluction. Then I put weed-free sheet on top of the soil and river rocks on top of it. Around 2 weeks later, a few of my cedar (at the corner of my lawn) started to turn brown in the middle part of the tree. Well, before the trees turn brown, the weather in B.C. was very hot and there was no rain for a few weeks. My neighbor told me I did not water the cedar enough and he said I must have missed out the corner part when I water my lawn and trees. Here are my questions: 1) Is the wipe out solution killing the cedar's root so it started to turn brown? 2) Or it turned brown because I did not water the corner part of my lawn? 3) It is continuing to turn brown now and what should I do to not to let them die? 4) How often and how long should I water my cedars (I usually water them once every 2 days or longer) 5) Do I have to cut away the brown leaves in order to let new leaves grow? 6) Please advice me how to save my cedar Thank you very much!
Well I don't know if the chemicals are responsible or not, maybe a local garden ctre could help with that, but depending on how deep the river rock layers are, they could be making it hard for rainfall to be really effective, plus their weight can have an impact on young shallow roots as well. Those trees may not have been there long at all when you moved in, and if not, they would need a lot of water, esp. this summer.
It sounds like your digging coincided with the time of year when many conifers start to shed older interior foliage - which is fine and natural if that's the case. Almost all real problems are not selective in that fashion. The real problems tend to discolor all the foliage, or may be limited to tips, like with pine shoot tip moth.
