I am inquiring about the two cedars in our row of hedge that seem to be deteriorating recently. The trees were just planted late this spring and we have been watering regularly. Instructions indicate soaker hose for minimum of 8 hours once a week for first season, which we have been doing. After reading some of the posted conversations on this site I did check and saw a "web" on the back of one of the trees. Any ideas of problem and any solutions to help? Please see attached photos. Also, the tag on the trees indicated that they will have a pyrmid type shape but I don't think they look like they will. Have we planted them too close together in our desire to have a quick hedge? Thank you for any responses.
Check original soil balls for moisture situation and adjust watering approach if necessary. Occasional easily seen webs liable to be beneficial predatory spiders. The more of these, the better. If infested with plant-sucking mites will have fine webbing and dirty appearance throughout discolored area. Use of a hand lens should result in discovery of quantities of these minute arachnids moving about the webbing and foliage. If instead some kind of blight different measures will need to be taken than if infested with mites. Must find out exactly what the problem is before effective remediation possible. While generally more narrow and dense than normal for species habit of cultivar does vary. Some propagations do produce a more broad-based growth on some sites than the common more or less columnar shape. Search Google Images using cultivar name 'Smaragd' (Emerald etc. are translations into English rather than the actual name of the plant) for numerous photos showing variation seen. Long-term hedge spacing would be something like 2'-3', but use of that in this instance could result in annoyance with the wait for the gaps to disappear. Growth of this plant can be quite slow under ordinary circumstances.
