Thanks for looking at this. Below are some additional photos. My grass is watering 2x /wk.

Picture Facing East looking at West facing part of Tree.

Picture Facing West looking at East facing part of Tree.

Picture Facing North looking at South facing part of Tree

Tree base. I recently cleaned up mulch to get it less compacted.

Base of tree. We got a pretty good rain last night and I ran it after cleaning up the mulch to see how the water sat in the basin of the mulch and if it was running off in any particular direction. I noticed it "drained" towards the irrigation hose. I'm thinking about drilling some holes around the base of the tree with my hand auger to try and give it a little more ability to soak down into root ball.

2x Daily 10 mins

==>>> in my sand.. the tree woulld already be dead ...

go out there ... and use a hand shovel and dig two or three holes.. down 6 to 8 inches.. AND FIND OUT ABOUT MOISTURE AT DEPTH ...

DO SOME IN the root ball soil planted.. and find the edge and find out about native soil ...

you are worrying.. because you are guessing ...

that most likely was not grown in a pot for its life.. and when LARGE trees are field dug.. there is no real way to tell how slaughtered the root mass was .. so you cant really compare any two trees .. unless you bare rooted them ..

in my sand.. having dug hundreds of holes.. and seeing what i see on your tree ... i would probably put A HOSE on trickle for 4 to 6 hours ... then i would be very sure.. the root ball.. and surrounding soil is moist ...

not quite sure what i would do in clay.. since i never owned any ...

imo.. newly planted trees really shouldnt be on drip irrigation ... mostly because you just dont know whats going on ...

so go dig some holes with a hand trowel.. AND FIND OUT...

and be sure to understand.. you need to get water thru the whole root ball planted.. a little surface water is not going to get 8 to 12 inches into any soil.. with a 10 min squirt ... and 6 to 8 inches down.. is where the roots are ...

ken

i might bet my shiny penny.. the soil so hard.. you wont be able to dig a hole with a hand trowel ... but thats a WAG

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hand+trowel&t=ffcm&iax=1&ia=images

Great advice Ken on getting into the dirt rather than just looking at the top level. I wasn't surprised that the soil wasn't dry as I feel like 2x should be enough, but again, I'm guessing and not sure at all. But this is what I found.

I was able to easily dig through the top layer of "fill clay" from the original planting. I then was able to hand dig to the natural soil from the tree, in whatever fashion it was originally planted in

As you can see, that hole was full of water. And I was able to push my arm deeper in the water up to my elbow and it was all very very wet.

I purposely tried to find the edge of the original dug hole and I was able to find it. As you can see, the clay has basically formed a clay pot and is retaining water...possibly too well.

From what I'm seeing here and from digging into this...I might have an overwatering problem because of the lack of drainage which the clay "pot" is causing. A few searches show that overwatering essentially suffocates the tree. So I'm going to turn off my irrigation from the tree and dig another hole tomorrow to see what the moisture level looks like.

Any other thoughts?

Interesting on a few levels! Thank you for digging to get to the root of the problem (bad pun left in there).

I am amazed you dug in the rootball and found water in hot Texas. Must be good solid clay and strong irrigation. Exact opposite of what I expected.

The second point I'm maybe seeing is it was buried too deep. Where I am looking is right at the trunk where it meets the ground. Others on a pc might see better, but where do the roots start on the trunk? Is it under ground level? Also is there some damage to the trunk on the right side of the picture showing the irrigation?

looks like oak wilt to me