Use a magnifier to look for mites on the affected ones, in case those are the problem. Infested growth will turn glassy green before becoming dry and brown.

but i think the totally brown one is dead ...

imo ... fert spikes are useless ... and also imo... trees are not children.. and never need to be fed ... if you feed your lawn.. anything with roots under said lawn.. will get what little they need ...

but i doubt that had anything to do with this problem ...

welcome to the forums.. always add your location .. it might matter ...

ken

So this weekend I went out to cut down the dead trees and replace it with a new one. I have been checking for bugs on the other two surrounding trees and have not seen anything besides random tiny spider webs, but it looks like their brown spots are starting to expand.

It wasn't until today when I went to water my new tree, I realized those tiny spider webs were attached to cocoon-like object and there are bug heads sticking out of the top of them and they are killing my bushes.

I checked all my other trees too and they all look like they're starting to get these bugs. What are they and how do I get rid of them before they kill off all my trees? :(

Pretty sure that those are bag worms. Others may have additinal or better advice, but I think manually removing them is the simplest way to deal with them.

I had them on a juniper so bad once that the whole plant seemed to be moving. My wife and I put on leather gloves and grabbed a 5 gallon bucket and got to work. We almost filled the bucket.

Thankfully the Juniper was well established and recovered rather quickly. It doesn’t look like you have them too bad. Just pull them off and your plants should be fine.

Thank you for your response. After researching, I’m positive they are bag worms too. The two trees that were surrounding the one I just removed, easily have over 100 bagworms on them. Everything I read last night says the best time to spray for them is between late May and early June but after July may be too late. I can remove all that I can reach but since their bags are less than 1/2” long and I can see some of them moving & feeding, maybe its not too late to spray? My trees are about 10’ tall and I have 34 of them so there’s a good possibility I will not be able to pull all bagwoms off.

Any suggestions on sprays? I found this one but no real reviews on how it helped with bagworms.

Thanks again for your help. It has been very surprising and super disappointing on how quickly destructive these things have been.

(MO zone6)

bag worms didn't kill your first plant ,,I see no bags

not sure but look into captain jack's dead bug brew

EDIT: IT CONTAINS SPINOSID

ron

Possibly insufficient watering for the dead one. Planted too high? Was it balled and burlapped? Many variables. Hard to know without knowing how they were treated, climate, rainfall, etc. etc. Seem too close together.

My photos show up blurry on here for some reason but my dead tree had these bags on them too. I had no idea what they were and I never noticed them moving but they looked just like this online image of a bag worm.

The trees side by side barely touch one another and the recommended spacing was observed when planting. We had a pretty wet Spring this year and the plants are not balled up or burlapped.

Reading last night, it says if you have bag worms, your trees will start to turn brown and die off at the tops first - which is what is happening. I am going to try to pull off as many as I can and then treat them with the above bug spray. Hopefully the rest will survive.

OK if you say

but if the bug is not listed , then chances are it won't be killed

ron

I would use the spray and hope for the best. Make sure the bag worms are listed on the label for that spray before using it. I am sorry for your loss but hopefully you can treat and save the rest of the trees before any more die off.

Never shoot blindly. Perhaps read THIS first.

tj

Thanks!

tj - thank you for directing me to read some facts about the bag worms and using a spray at the correct time of the year. Good luck kiwi. I hope you caught the trouble with the trees early enough. The people hear are so helpful.