Looks fine to me! These are tough trees. No fertilizer. Great bark. I think your tree is healthy and you shouldn't worry.

im not much concerned with any leaf issues in october.. on a deciduous tree ... its just shutting down ....

imo.. trees NEVER need fert ...

ken

Tree asked about here looks pretty green but otherwise trees can and often do (on deficient soils) need to be fertilized, same as any other garden and landscape plants. The only thing different about trees is they develop a substantial woody framework, there is nothing about this feature that makes them immune to mineral deficiencies.

Local USDA Cooperative Extension Service office can be asked about leaf spotting and management of local soils. Including testing for mineral content.

Without more information watering setup doesn't sound like enough for a tree of some size. Fertilizer spikes are a waste of money, due to the fertilizer having been concentrated into compact shapes that will have minimal coverage once inserted.

Many or even most trees have leaf-blemishes this late in the season. Or even turned completely brown & fallen off!

Yeah, my Chinese elm (a bit bigger than yours) has needed some low limbs cut off because the tree spreads outward quite a bit down low, but w/my handy chainsaw the job went quickly.

Branch removal of bark interest trees needs to be minimized because the more branches the more bark to look at. With much thinning of these types in particular often being therefore a bad idea. At least when they have an already open growing habit, such as with birches and paperbark maple - I have seen both of these thinned many times here, much to the detriment of the specimen in every case. And in my area many kinds of trees with attractive bark are deciduous, so that there should be no need to open the crown up to increase visibility of the stems.

OK well all your comments come as a great relief to us, and we are a bit surprised. Our elm does not look like others of the same type in the neighborhood. I looked at some of those and did not see hardly any leaf spots. This is why I posted. Also, two branches just up and died in the last month. One of them has the same different color all along the branch.

I will see if I can get a couple more pictures of those branches. Of course, it could just be branch weight and they broke. Like I said, we need to trim her back some.

Thanks for the advice about fert stakes, and the watering. I considered turning it up a bit. We are going to check the whole drip system Sunday for malfunctions, etc.

Thank you ALL of you for taking the time to post your thoughts!! My wife and I appreciate it!

>we need to trim her back some<

What are you seeing?

You can reduce need for watering with mulching.

Chinese elms (I have the cultivar 'Drake') put out so much growth every year that I have them annually pruned in autumn. The arborist takes out about 1/3 of the canopy, a combination of thinning and heading cuts. This results in a better looking crown and also reduces the 'sail' effect so that the danger of branches cracking in wet, windy weather is reduced.