Take a small knife and scrape a tiny ( 1/4 inch or so) bit of bark away from the bottom of the brown area. If it's creamy white or soft green and moist under the bark, that part is still alive. If it's dry and tan or brown, then that area is dead.

Do that every foot or so up the top of the tree. At some point if you find dry/tan/brown under the bark and it continues up from there, you can assume that portion of the tree is dead and can cut it off there.

Also, alive branches and trunks will feel cool when you hold them, dead area feel warm or the same temp as the air when held.

The parts that are still creamy white/soft green and moist under the bark will probably re-sprout again in the future. But it may not sprout until spring.

Those brown leaves will not turn green again, but if it's on a live branch (as tested above) when the branch leafs out again in spring, the brown leaves will probably be pushed off by the new growth and fall.

Podocarpus are pretty tough trees and in about 2-3 years it will look great again, just don't forget to water during heat waves. Even if it's on an automatic irrigation system, if the temps go over 90*F, it's a good idea to supplement with a hose, as you've found out the hard way.

Podocarpus may prefer acid soil, but they are very adaptable and tolerate our neutral to slightly alkaline soils and water just fine. It's really almost impossible to change the pH of a native sol anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that. Don't use peat moss, it is expensive and dries out too easily. Better to use a nice 3-5" thick mulch of composted shredded fir bark instead. It will help keep the soil cooler in summer and reduce evaporation.
If you have "Mow N Blow" gardeners who use a blower, try Shredded Bark, also called Gorilla Hair. It resists being blown away by the gardeners better than many other mulches.

I'd also give it a good all-purpose fertilizer in spring, around March/April to help it grow again. Always water before and right after fertilizing, never feed a dry plant. Good luck, I think it will be fine.

This post was edited by BarbJP on Tue, Dec 30, 14 at 18:21

How did it turn out? What did you do? I have some of the similar issues too.