I have two japanese maple where the leaves are not all coming out. I can see some leaves come out on both trees but seem to be having a hard time to all come out. Can somebody give me some advise on how to save both of them. The smaller one is about 7 years old and the the other one is about 3 years old.
Were these trees in good health last summer? It's possible they suffered badly from the cold last winter (if your winter was as rough as ours was). There doesn't seem to be too much you can do, except to make sure the trees' basic needs are met -- for instance, the soil isn't completely drying out -- and maybe giving them a mild dose of a balanced fertilizer to encourage new growth. If you can determine for sure whether some parts of the tree are dead (for instance, if they have produced no buds, and there is no green layer under the bark when you scratch it with your thumb), then you could trim those parts off. It is difficult for a gardener (or a parent) to have to sit helplessly and watch how things develop, but you can't do their growing for them.
Aspar88, This is a really good question and one I have, too. I have a 14 year old Waterfall that looks like that this year and it's killing me. It has some branches trying to resprout, but can the overall beauty of the tree ever come back? This is my dilemma. At what point in time will I decide whether or not it needs to be dug and replaced? I won't keep a plant that looks awful just because it's still alive or has some live growth on it. And yet, if it leafs out enough to be balanced, I would be okay pruning it back severely to see what it looks like next year. Chances are whatever did that will weaken it so much it won't live the next year, then the decision will be made for me. I have already taken out my 7 year old Shishigashira and replanted. I also have a Viridis and a couple of others that look pretty sad, too. It was a terrible winter and spring here, sounds like it was in your area, too. I thought the hard freeze we had two years ago would do everything in, but turns out that was nothing compared to this. Gardening is not for wimps. Kay
