In my experience with mine, once the leaves start to yellow, they fall fairly fast. It will be all glowing yellow for a day or 2 then wham! they are all on the ground. Makes it easy in fall to rake up at least. I'd agree, it's a little early, but maybe something stressed it and it needs to drop them early this year to rest. I don't know about the die back, but if the rest of the tree seems healthy and comes back next spring i wouldn't worry about it too much. Haven't heard of a disease or anything like that, but there could be one. It almost sounds like fireblight but i've ever heard that it could affect ginkgo.

Please don't fertilize a tree that is struggling with insufficient watering and other climate stresses.
Better it drop its leaves early and concentrate on growing a good root foundation in its first few years in position.

I know ginkgo's don't need lots of water and our area is not in a drought. I just mentioned this b/c it is the only thing I could think of that could possible be wrong (besides not enough` fert.) since they are such a resistance species.

I mentioned fertilizing b/c I also considered that my soil was lacking. I do need to know fert. info when it is ready to be fertilized.

But yes ma'am, I will not fert a struggling plant. Thank you. However, won't fertilizing stimulate root growth as well as the crown???

You perhaps could spread some organic bulb type fertilizer (like espoma bulb tone or bone meal) around the drip line and let that leach in slowly (don't dig it in- just cover it with a thin layer of mulch to keep critters away and let it sink in as it rains)- that tends to be heavy in the root stimulation dept, but is still gentle. Fall and winter are a time here where we have tremendous root growth, even though we can't see it happening. Chemical ferts on stressed trees just burns them up- it seems backwards but it'd be like if you too way too many vitamins when you already weren't feeling well. You'd just end up with a stomachache and throw them up.

This summer's been hard on lots of things- it was just so topsy turvey. I wouldn't stress out over it- let it do its thing and wait until spring and see what happens. Nature's fairly resilient.

How about milorganite. My granny recommeds it for my daylilies. I guess it will be good and gentle on my ginkgo's as well. Thanks everyone.

Still no idea about the few random branches dying back???

When a tree struggles it can better cope sometimes by reducing the resources it must support. It can do this by shutting off nutrients to a limb so that more resources are available to other parts. That could be what your tree has done.