Poisened photinia

Zebbedee

I stupidly spread some chainsaw wood chip from ash logs around the base of a healthy young red robin.
After a week the leaves withered and fell off.
I'm assuming the ash wood chip was too acidic.

I've tried scraping away the wood chip and soil from the base and replaced it with compost and also added plant food.
Is there anything else I can do to try save it?

magicbastarder

i would be very surprised if the wood chips caused the problem. it's usually conifers which are thought of as acidic, and i planted a load of trees in among mulched up leylandii without any effect on them.
given how dry it's been recently, was the plant getting enough water?

Zebbedee

magicbastarder wrote: »

i would be very surprised if the wood chips caused the problem. it's usually conifers which are thought of as acidic, and i planted a load of trees in among mulched up leylandii without any effect on them.
given how dry it's been recently, was the plant getting enough water?

I'm assuming it was the woodchip because it's neighboring photinia got little or no chip around their bases and they're still very healthy.


They were all watered daily.

Lumen

Zebbedee wrote: »

They were all watered daily.

Bit weird then. My guess was that the dry chips soaked up any incident water.

On the other hand, watering daily is too often, and wood chips also stop evaporation, so it's possible they were stopping the soil from drying out (which is normal and good) and in effect you overwatered.

Stick your fingers in the soil and see what it's like. At the moment I'm only watering pots and new bareroots twice a week, leaving until the soil is no longer damp.

Or it could just be a coincidence?

Thud

how old were the wood chips? New wood chips/mulch use up nitrogen initially when they start decomposing, it think you need to leave them decompose 6-12months before you can use them as mulch for feeding plants.
If you want to use them to keep down weeds in an area with well established or no plants you might be able to use them fresh.

Lumen

I think that nitrogen thing is a myth.

my3cents

Zebbedee wrote: »

I'm assuming it was the woodchip because it's neighboring photinia got little or no chip around their bases and they're still very healthy.


They were all watered daily.

There's your problem.

looksee

my3cents wrote: »

There's your problem.

Young shrubs survive lashing rain every day, most summers!

my3cents

looksee wrote: »

Young shrubs survive lashing rain every day, most summers!

An over potted plant would have far too much moisture absorbing compost around it for the amount of root that can utilise that moisture. If the compost is then soaked everyday it can easily lead to the death of the roots.

Its a better more likely reason than the poisoning by ash bark.

I've certainly manged to kill plants in the ground by over watering, some would be far more susceptible than others. I put a Fremontodendron 'California Glory' in an ideal really hot dry spot on our house wall in the UK and watered it every night for a fortnight and I killed it The soil around the planting hole wasn't that wet but the compost in the planting hole was soaking.

Lumen

my3cents wrote: »

over potted plant

Aha!

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=864

Someone in a garden centre told me that I shouldn't buy pots too big.

He used a tone that gently implied "look, you're the customer so I'm not going to ram this lesson home too hard, but..."

To which I responded "ah, right, sure", in the tone that gently implied "I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm not about to learn the easy way so let me just buy this enormous pot".

standardg60

I'd imagine the saw chips were contaminated with the chainsaw oil, which was then washed down to the roots.

Zebbedee

standardg60 wrote: »

I'd imagine the saw chips were contaminated with the chainsaw oil, which was then washed down to the roots.

Thanks to all who replied.
This seems the most likely explanation given that the damaged plants neighbors received exactly the same amount of daily watering and are all healthy but the one which got poisoned received far more freshly sawn ash chip than it's neighbors.


Is this damaged plant likely to repair itself or should I dig it up and replace? There appears to be zero growth of new shoots since it was poisoned a fortnight ago. There's a noticeable (and irritating) gap in my hedge now.

macraignil

Zebbedee wrote: »

Thanks to all who replied.
This seems the most likely explanation given that the damaged plants neighbors received exactly the same amount of daily watering and are all healthy but the one which got poisoned received far more freshly sawn ash chip than it's neighbors.


Is this damaged plant likely to repair itself or should I dig it up and replace? There appears to be zero growth of new shoots since it was poisoned a fortnight ago. There's a noticeable (and irritating) gap in my hedge now.

There would be no guarantee the damaged plant would recover but I have seen new planted shrubs, that seem to die, come back to live after over a year of just being left undisturbed. In a new hedge there always seem to be one or two plants that don't take well to the move. The roots may have got damaged at some stage, some cut worms or other soil pest might have attacked it at a critical time, it might be planted on a rock... There are a lot of potential reasons for failure and a small percentage failure on mass planting would be expected. If it is irritating you, do replace it, but I'd be inclined to leave it a few months first to see if there is some recovery.

standardg60

For the sake of one plant I would just replace it. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to replace the soil in the area too.