Hi; I have a Bloodgood Japanese Maple in my back garden and a Hydrangea tree in my front garden, both seem to have the same problem neither of them are showing signs of any leaves. I have scratched the bark on both and both are still green. I have never ran into this problem before. Where I live it is a zone 5 everything else is in both gardens is in full bloom. I have fertilized both and still nothing. what can I do?
If it was a cold winter maybe they froze out. Fertilizer is for correcting nutrient deficiencies. That's all it does. If a plant is deficient and the product chosen corrects that deficiency then growth may improve. Fertilizer has no effect on insufficient water, bad drainage, bugs (over-fertilizing can actually make these worse) or other problems not related to nutrient deficiency.
Thank you for the reply, however my question is what do I do? . both trees are still green under the bark whichtells me they are still alive, but my question is will they ever produce leaves or are they just slowly dying and I should just dig them out?
I would just wait a while to see if they are going to put out some belated growth. Maples have a back-up set of buds, and some hydrangeas (this isn't an oak-leaf hydrangea, by any chance) can be quite frustratingly late. It's hard and frustrating, I know, to have to look at them every day like this. I've got a Hydrangea quercifolia that can't seem to decide whether it's going to live or die, and it's in a prominent place beside my deck. I'm distracting myself by thinking of what else I will plant there if it doesn't pull through.
