Leader in trouble

The amazing leader #38 has lost over half of its volume over the last four weeks.

#38 on August 14, 2016

#38 on September 11, 2016

The signs of damage can be seen on the August picture but the spread of the disease dramatically picked up in the last two weeks. The change from last week to this was the top of the tree started to get damage as well:

Brown spots on top of #38, September 11, 0216

I have started spraying this and other trees with Dakonil 4 days ago. The reason I wasn't not spraying them before was the ready-to-spray containers were too expensive to put on a larger tree like this. I also did not experience a larger tree to get damaged so severely over a relatively short period of time. Now I purchased vast quantity of Dakonil in concentrated from Amazon for $14 for 16 oz, which is enough for 64 gallons of diluted spray. Interestingly, Sequoia is listed in the included booklet as one of the plants for which it is recommended.

Unfortunately, this may be too late for the leader. It loses needles on a scale that can be observed from one day to another. I am planning to spray it every other day or so. A minor positive news is that it continued to grow upwards, adding 0.5 of an inch for the past week.

The rest of the sequoias continued minor growth but the Fall is definitely knocking on the door. The night temperatures started going into the 50s. Day temperatures are still swinging pretty wild, from higher 80s to mid-60s.

One unexpected growth happened with #104. As a part of the acclamation to the new conditions it turned pale green-yellowish on the top after a few weeks after the move. The needles on top looked more like long curvy leaves. The density of these leaf-needles was much higher than normal growth. They looked like grass on top of the sequoia rather than normal looking branch and needles. The overall height also suffered because the top lead died. Then out of the middle of that "grass lawn" a very strong shoot started growing about third week of August. By September 3 it gained almost 5 inches and then after another week it added another 3.

April 28.25

31.5

31.5

32

32

33

Aug 14 31.5

Sept 3 36.25

Sept  11 39.5

#104 with a strong lead late in growing seasons on Sept 11, 2016

The rest of the strong samples added about half of an inch and weaker ones stayed at the same height as last week.

Also, I have now started tracking a few strongest 2016 seedlings.  #264 sample that was moved early in the season currently stands at 9.5 inches. The rest are between 3 and 7 inches.

#264 Strongest 2016 seedling on September 11, 2016

New 2016 seedlings from start till now

This is a reply to The Arid Arborist - Dew Harvest, but I thought it would be useful as a post as well.

Ah! The nemesis of young sequoias is the early days. The "recipe" I found so far is to place newly germinated seeds in containers indoors. I use grow lights and a gentle breeze of a large fan moving the air in the room but not directed at the seedlings directly.

Based on many unsuccessful attempts, it looks like freshly cleaned containers (with soap), a few sprays of chlorothalonil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorothalonil, sold in Earl May) on a mix of peat moss with about 10% of medium size perlite. Consistency of a wet sponge. I also put a few small rocks at the bottom of the containers. Without the rocks peat moss/perlite continue to wash out of the container. I had some containers with more than half of the material washed out.

I do not water them from above! The drier the seed and the place where it connects with the white root, the better. Instead, I have a rectangular pan that is just deep enough that when I submerge the container the water goes to about 1 inch from the top. The idea here is to have the lower part of the root wet while leaving top part dry. I got this pan in a hardware store in the masonry department. Its original use is for making cement mixture. I used to use a small bucket for the same purpose but it was very tedious to do it with each individual container. Now I fill the pan with water and then submerge an entire tray with 98 containers for 5 minutes. Then I lift it up and let the excess water run off.

With this method I had minimal number of young sequoias dampening off. Still happens, but not as bad.

By far the worst damage was done by a mouse that killed about 20 by digging in the containers. I built a cage that harbored one 98 sample tray over winter and early Spring. It is made out of 1x1" pieces of wood with a 1/4" steel mesh and a plexiglass top sheet that seals the box.

I also tried just droping a bunch of seeds in a large 15L container filled with the same mixture outdoors this summer. There were many germinations but 100% perished within a few days of germination. I went through over a 100 seeds like that.

When I had about 120 seedlings standing at 2-3 inches I took them outside in a moderate shade. I also did this gradually over a week (bringing in and out in early May).

They were doing very well for the first few weeks. A lot of them got to about 4-5" but then a few different diseases started hitting them. It looked like the brown rust, purple tint and black dots were jumping from one to another very quickly. I kept removing the ones that died but probably not fast enough.

2016 crop has been thinning down. Black containers to the right of the trays are "dead soldiers". Aug 2, 2016

As of today I have about 30-40 that are still viable. Just a couple look very healthy. One in particular was separated early on from the rest and placed into a large container. I moved it to the woods where I am planting permanently. There it grew to 7" tall and it also has a very good volume of side branches.

2016 new seedling that was moved from the rest an into a larger container. It's about 7" tall Sept 5, 2016

I would love to do this again, but realistically, I ran out of space on the 1 acre of clearing. It is extremely difficult to clear out the forrest here. If I knew what I would be facing I would not have started it this Spring.

I will add these notes to the recent post. 

Show must go on

The oldest #15 sequoia died. The demise was fast - from the first signs of trouble to complete death about one week.

September 2016, #15 is dead

There was a hole in the ground about 3 meters from the tree. The likeliest hypothesis is that an animal dug a tunnel under the tree and destroyed the roots.

The vast majority of the trees continued strong growth throughout the second half of the summer. Most have doubled in height and some younger ones tripled.

The leader #38 exceeded 4 feet currently standing just shy of 50 inches. It added a little over 20 inches, which corresponds to 70% growth. This is a permanently planted tree. It is not surprising because at the time of the moving from a container into the ground it was one of the strongest and it continued it's growth with a much large root volume available. It does show the signs of trouble. The inner volume of needles turned rusty brown and dozens of branches were removed. It is not as healthy as it was at the peak of its growth in June-July but the top continues to look very healthy and growth continues into the Fall.

The leader in absolute height gain is #212, a three year old sample, that added 22.5 inches. #212 is firmly among strongest even in the 4-year-old tree camp standing at 36.5 inches. It has absolutely no damage throughout its entire volume, completely green.

From the percentile growth #219, a struggling last year sample more than tripled, currently standing at 18.5 inches. It started this year at 6 inches. Although some old damage is still visible it is definitely turning into a contender.

Next step in the saga is replanting of the 2015-2016 winter germinations into larger pots. Small 9cm containers have very high rate of seedling dying. The hypothesis is that the very small root volume does not provide enough buffer for water and close proximity of sick samples to the healthy ones leads to the deceases quickly jumping across and spreading. Two seedlings from this year batch that were separated and moved in larger containers away from two main trays are doing significantly better than the rest.