Beech party is ending

MiguelMC

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hello everyone
Earlier this year I saw a few beech saplings for a buck each and decided to go for my first forest planting.
I reduced the tap roots and arranged them in a tray and the plan was to leave them be for a year or two in order to get those roots intertwined and create a better foundation for a repot, during this time I would do some pruning in order to start define the shape of the canopy and promoting better ramification.

Everything was going swell until a few weeks ago when some leaves started to dry out. tbh I have no idea why this happened, my main guess would have been that I went a bit too aggressive with the root pruning what do you guys think? do you think any of these trees are salvageable?
kind regards
 

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0soyoung

Imperial Masterpiece
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Many species, such as maples develop some stem pressure in the spring which means there is enough water to express hardened foliage with no roots whatsoever. Then with transpiration, the available water column is spent, turgidity is lost, the leaves hang limp and wither. Ultimately they turn brown and stay attached because abscission is a life process and the tree (or the local area) is dead.

The flying leap into the endzone of recovery would have been to act as though they were cuttings you were trying to root - prevent water loss. It is a long slow process that likely would have taken most of the season. Yes, almost certainly you overdid the root work.
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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Don't do anything, Keep the planting watered, keep it in partial shade, some morning sun is okay. As leaves die, the planting will use less water, so check before you water if you were watering every day, it might change to every other day. It will vary with the weather and the health of the remaining trees. Some of those could possibly send out new leaves later in the summer, after they developed more roots. I would not give up on all the trees until this time next year. If they don't put out leaves by July 2020 they are truely dead.

Though those are young seedlings, less reserves, probably anything that is leafless in August 2019 will be truly dead.

Beech do not like roots being messed with once leaves have appeared. They don't like roots being messed with period. Excess root work is probably cause of death. But you haven't lost them all, see what survives. When you re-arrange the forest next spring, don't prune roots, just gently move them around.
 

MiguelMC

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They weren't leafing yet so i thought It was safe to do some pruning,but I believe it was excess pruning on the roots, would misting them help with water retention? or maybe a plastic cover? even though I'm quite sure they are goners
 
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