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Wondering the symptoms of overwatering a crepe myrtle. A similar thing happened to us last year after we planted our muskogee (sp?) and zoysia at the same time...ended up overwatering I think.
Our muskogee compared to our tuscarora on the other side of the yard didn't grow as much if any. It has these yellowish marks, maybe watermarks? The very few buds that there are are wilted and yellow. The Muskogee sits right in front of one of our watering spikits so it gets hammered when we water our lawn after reseeding our zoysia (watering 3 times a day for 2 weeks).
Can anyone suggest any treatment or any way to save this tree for the summer blooms? I can't tell if I'm overwatering or underwatering and know that the wilted look can be similar. Don't want to have any root rot and loose my tree!! THANKS!!!
The picture I inclucded shows the slight yellow spots on the leaves...Most branches have no new growth this year. White spots on the leaves are dead bugs from an organic pesticide I used for the lovely Japanese beetles!!
If they're getting watered 3x a day, I strongly suspect overwatering is the problem. Once they're established, crapes don't need a ton of water (and even when they're newly planted I don't think they'd need 3x a day). The only chance to fix the situation is to cut back on the watering frequency. Is there a way to adjust your sprinklers so they're not watering the area right around the tree?
In this case if your problem is a watering issue it's definitely overwatering, but in the future if you have something where you're not sure whether it's too much or too little water, you can do the finger test--stick your finger down a few inches into the ground near the plant and see how wet it feels. If it's really wet and it was getting to the point where you'd been planning to water again, then you're watering too much. But if it's really bone dry then you may not be watering enough.
thank you so much for your response!! I dug a little 5inch hole yesterday aboaut 2-3 ft from the root of the tree just to see if it was wet...of course it wasn't...but I do definately suspect that over the first 2 weeks after we planted our grass it got a tad too soaked.
We've cut back now...Its a toss up between saving our tree (which is just a year old though) or loosing the grass we just seeded for...husband says grass wins...haha
so we'll see if I can salvage both!! we're hand watering with a mobile sprinkler right now to still get the yard but avoid the tree...its a pain in the butt but...oh well!!
If it's feeling dry around the tree and you've backed off on the lawn watering you may not need to worry about going to extra lengths to avoid watering the tree. I thought you were still watering 3x a day but it sounds like you're not so we may need to think a bit more about the problem. Did the symptoms show up during the time you were watering 3x a day (or very shortly afterwards)? If so then it probably was the water and hopefully now that you're watering less and things are drying out it'll perk up if the roots weren't too badly damaged by all the water. But if you stopped the frequent watering a little bit ago and the symptoms just showed up recently then there may be something else going on.
