Rescuing a Dying Cork Bark Pine??

[junmilo]

Hi All,

So in the earlier post, i posted photos of the two of the 5 cork bark I have, that their needles are turning brown...etc...

So it is may now, I still don't see any candle movement from them. The needles are still green (half green half brown) including last years and 2nd year needles.

Do you guys think I should feed them heavily??

Also, I want to know if it's too late to graft one of those still green (last year) branch onto a regular black pine?...The temperatures here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is between 15 Degree Celsius to 25 Degree Celsius.

I will post photo from my phone shortly.

Thanks

 

[junmilo]

Here are the photos

 

[Dav4]

Still alive and the buds look healthy. I imagine they'll start to push shortly. As far as grafting, you generally want to use healthy, vigorous trees, which these are not right now. You could try an approach graft now but, again, the relative lack of health makes this an iffy prospect. You can start feeding now if you haven't already.

 

[junmilo]

Should I feed heavy or light?

 

[Dav4]

Should I feed heavy or light?

I wouldn't feed heavily...just regularly.

 

[junmilo]

Its kinda strange, all my white pines candle are growing and pushing...but all my red and black pines are still dormant for some reason...

 

[Beng]

Thats a fungus, I know a guy that dealt with it. You need to spray with copper, mancozeb, and perhaps one other fungicide.

Ben

 

[mcpesq817]

I hate to say it, but this looks like a goner. Once a pine looks like this, it's usually got a foot or two in the grave already.

 

[Vance Wood]

Its kinda strange, all my white pines candle are growing and pushing...but all my red and black pines are still dormant for some reason...

These trees are odd-balls anyway and they will grow when they feel like it;--- if at all. Trying to encourage anything will only guarantee disaster. They seem to be hanging by a thread and anything else at this point could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

If it's not fungal, it looks like it dried out over the winter at some point. If that's the case, I still think you're ok. That stresses trees, and can set them behind. Keep a close eye on watering, feed normally (which I don't start until candles are elongating anyway), and you'll know in the next few weeks. I'd also treat it with fungicide as a precautionary measure...I use liquid copper.

The apical bud appears to be growing and green?

 

[Paradox]

I think Brian is correct, they got a little dry over the winter. I have a couple of pines that have some needles that look like that and they are a bit further along, extending candles. Keep watering them when they need it and feed as Dave says. They are stressed right now so otherwise, I would probably leave them alone this year and let them recover.

 

[Nybonsai12]

My needles don't look like yours but similar to yours is that my whites are moving while the blacks and red are slow to get going. All were repotted recently. Pic of the white is from a week or two ago. Red and black pics from today.

 

[Paradox]

Yea, my JBP are behind the others as well. My JWP, scot and mugos are all pushing candles.
Its a couple of mu mugos and my scot that have some dried needles. The whites and JBPs are all fine.

I think it could be because the JBP are warmer weather pines and slower to get going while the JWP, mugo and scots are colder weather pines so they respond to warmer temps faster.

 

[Vance Wood]

I think Brian is correct, they got a little dry over the winter. I have a couple of pines that have some needles that look like that and they are a bit further along, extending candles. Keep watering them when they need it and feed as Dave says. They are stressed right now so otherwise, I would probably leave them alone this year and let them recover.

I think the correct term is desiccated, which is basically in the end the same thing as lack of water for a different reason. In most temperate locations if you lose a tree or experience damage because it dried out, it is usually because at some point you didn't keep the tree watered properly.

Desiccation occurs when the whether is extremely cold and windy. It sucks the moisture out of the tree. It is not necessarily the same kind of drying out one would expect when a tree is under-watered. A lot of you guys living below the same line as Chicago have probably never had to deal with it till this winter when things got really cold down to the Carolinas. We are only beginning to see the full effects of the most severe winter we have had in Michigan in a hundred years. Some of you have never experienced what we get up here on an annual basis---- till this winter.

 

[junmilo]

If it's not fungal, it looks like it dried out over the winter at some point. If that's the case, I still think you're ok. That stresses trees, and can set them behind. Keep a close eye on watering, feed normally (which I don't start until candles are elongating anyway), and you'll know in the next few weeks. I'd also treat it with fungicide as a precautionary measure...I use liquid copper.

The apical bud appears to be growing and green?

The candles are pushing out today all over the tree...we had great weather this weekend...both days were around 20-25 celcius...

 

[Vance Wood]

The candles are pushing out today all over the tree...we had great weather this weekend...both days were around 20-25 celcius...

Be happy that it is growing. If it were mine I would not push it even a little bit.

 

[junmilo]

Be happy that it is growing. If it were mine I would not push it even a little bit.

I water the tree in the evening and early morning before I head to work. It will rain for three days starting tomorrow. I will watch it carefully and kill my wife's cherry tree next to it...I think the cherry tree has caused the death of my one tree so far.

 

[Vance Wood]

I water the tree in the evening and early morning before I head to work. It will rain for three days starting tomorrow. I will watch it carefully and kill my wife's cherry tree next to it...I think the cherry tree has caused the death of my one tree so far.

I'm sorry but I don't understand the link between the Cherry Trees and the demise of your own trees. I suspect if you have been having trouble in the past, the problem is not someone else's but your own. You may not like that assessment but until you accept that possibility and try to recognize what you are doing wrong, not only are you going to be killing trees but your marriage as well. Believe me when I tell you that you do not want your wife to be against you in this.

 

[junmilo]

At the end of last summer. There were massive colonies of Beatles living on that cherry tree. The leaves of the tree were turning from green color to a bronze colour and it migrated from one branch to another. I have sprayed a mix of surplur and nem oil on the cherry tree this year to control the pests.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Full sun, and careful with the watering; mine in small bonsai pots in Birmingham still aren't getting watered every day yet. Ideally water in the morning, and check in the evening to be sure they're not bone dry. If they're not bone dry, they can make it until the next morning.

Glad to hear they're making a push for it.