Maple Tree Problems

21 years ago

I put in several maple trees two years ago in early spring. I got real good deals on very big trees, but so far two of them have died and three others are not looking too good, and six of them are looking fine.

One of them is a sugar maple and the top of it has died. It did the same last year and I cut off the dead. This year more dead at the top and I cut the dead off again. Other than that this tree is doing fine. Am I doing the right thing? The only thing I was thinking is maybe I should cut further down in the live part of the tree, but it would be real noticable.

I had four crimson maples, two of them have died, one is looking kind of bare and the other looks ok at best. I only paid $50 a piece for these and they are four inch caliper and about 20 feet tall. They were not in great shape to begin with. What I was thinking of doing is cutting the one that has little foilage way back and hope for the best. If I don't do anything I am afraid it will die. It also has several dead branches that I will cut out no matter what. The other one that looks ok has most of it's foilage on one side and the other side is bare. I have done nothing to it except for cutting out the dead.

I have three read maples. Two of them are doing fine and one has me a little concerned. It has some cracks in the bark that I have trimmed back to good wood and done nothing else. I just did that. The problem is that it is not very full like the other two and it was abolutely full of sead pods. It is just now getting it's leaves while the other two are full of leaves. Don't know whether I need to do anything or not?

The tree I like the best is a Norway maple that is doing fine. It's about 25' tall and very green and full. The other one is a denom (sp?) maple. It was a mess when I got it and I thought if would die for sure. He gave it to me for nothing. It's about 15 feet tall and very thin. It had next to no ball and I could pick it up with one hand. Most of the foilage was on one side and the tree looked lopsided. I cut the biggest part of the tree away and it's been doing fine.

I appreciate any suggestion. I don't want to lose my trees. Thank you.

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Comments (3)

TNcrystal_stoner
21 years ago
You may still be having some transplant issues... really , this is the year they should be starting to do well. I would quit cutting on the silver maple so soon... give it a little time. I seen plenty of trees that leaf out late, or not as fast as we would like.

I really think that with as large as your trees are, they are just still trying to recover from being transplanted. A LOT of root mass was cut off them. Crimson King are pretty slow growing anyway. If these trees were mine, I'd quit pruning on them for a bit, water them well once a week, and maybe do a top dress fertilizer. Cutting the branches on these trees is really not helping matters right now they need the leafs to make food and grow. Do your pruning in fall.

BTW, 50 dollars for a 4" caliper tree, is way below wholesale price. My guess is these trees were left sitting too long after being dug and they REALLY have suffered. Again, I just say give them time and water.
jimkw
Original Author
21 years ago
I'm not cutting anything live off of them. I am just taking off the dead branches. As for the top of the sugar maple, I just took off what was dead on the top down to a point where there was a three way Y. I cut all three shoots off because they were dead. I waited until the tree had leaves before doing this to make sure it was truly a dead limb.

Same with the Crimson so far I have not cut anything other than dead limbs. Since I wrote the question the Red maple that had so many seed pods is looking much better. It's just later than the other two Red's. When we planted it, it had a really huge ball which probably means more root loss than the others.

The trees did not sit long at all after digging them out. The ones I got for $50, were not dug and balled like the more expensive ones because he was clearing an area and could not get his equipment back to them. I knew I was taking a chance on them, but the Red's and the Sugar's were really good looking trees and dug up properly, and other than the dead on the top of the one and the seed pods on the other they are doing fine. I have not done any pruning at all yet.
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fvhartm130_juno_com
15 years ago
I have two maple trees in my back yard close together with
our picnic table between them, I guess there about thirty or
more years old and have always been healthy, but as of now
something seems to be pruning my trees. I have stems of 4 to five leaves to each stem lying all over on the ground it looks like something has chewed them off. The only thing we have in the area is Squirrels that could do that. The end of the stems have a clean cut to them.

What could cause this problem ??

Thank You

Fred Hartman