P.S. I try to do the infrequent, deep watering method and have the watering on a smart irrigation controller/timer.

sorry to hear about your losses, weaver. It's probably texas root rot or verticillium wilt.

I had a tree suddenly wild and die like that too a few years back. I don't think there's much you can do but plant species that are more tolerant to the disease (pines, palms, others.)

Did you check the soil between waterings to see if the water got deep enough? Or to see if the plants got too dry between watering? What you see on the top is not always indicative of what's going on underground.

The 'compostable' pots really don't break down quickly enough in our soils. Next time just remove from the nursery container and plant in native soil.

You mention 'I built the soil up around the two fruit trees'. Does that mean you brought in soil and placed it over the roots after planting? Or added it near the trunk? Or just created a berm on the downhill side? Please explain.

The three plants you mention have very different water needs. The sage only needs water once every week or so in summer while the fruit trees could probably use it twice a week.

Some 'smart' controllers aren't so smart and instead of watering the same volume at different intervals, they actually deliver different amounts of water. Tomatofreak is right, check the soil. Emitters can clog, smart timers often need adjustments.

I'd recommend you contact Jeff Lee in the Gilbert water conservation department for irrigation advice. He's a whiz with irrigation controllers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gilbert water conservation

aztreelvr:
Only the plum tree had the "compostable" pot. I definitely won't keep those in the ground again. Hence the quotes.

As for the soil, I built a berm around the tree.

Because the plants have very different needs, I tried to use different irrigation drippers. Example the sage had a 1 GPH end and no berm, just a small pocket. This is how the other sage on my property are watered and all seem fine.

For the fruit trees, I used adjustable drippers that fill the basin that I created with the berm. The water runs for about 80 minutes I think.

I really think something was going on with the soil in this area because I had three different plants that died, all in the same area.

When I pulled the texas sage out, it did appear that there was some kind of rot going on. The "bark" / outer layer of the root seems to peel away and I didn't see any white roots. This particular sage had a lot of leaf drop because there was no clearing between it and the ground so wind and blower didn't clean the underneath it. Normally I would think this would be a nice natural compost, but I am afraid it made a good condition for rot.

PS Thanks for the link and contact info. :)

How often are you watering?

This time of year for sage = once every 7 - 14 days with about 8 gallons (assuming 3 foot canopy)
Apricot & plum = once every 5 - 10 days with about 10 - 20 gallons (assuming 5 foot canopy)

Leaf litter shouldn't be a problem but planting too deeply is. Watering too frequently in summer can promote fungal and bacterial rot in many desert adapted plants.

Hope this helps.

More than a few of us have strolled out into our yards in the summer to admire our trees only to find one we had looked at just a few days before glowing in the peak of health now standing completely dead with every brown leaf frozen in place. We have been victims of a fungal infection known as either Cotton Root Rot or Texas Root Rot. Same thing, different name (also historically known as Ozonium).

The typical symptoms are a healthy appearing tree suddenly within two to five days wilts and dies during summer leaving its dry brown leaves permanently hanging on the branches. These leaves do not blow off later.

There is no treatment of the tree as the first symptom is its death. All dicot trees (over 2,800 species to date) are likely effected. Natives to a much lesser extent.

This year I lost two cherries on Colt (Brooks and Coral Champagne) and a pluot (GeoPride) on Citation. All were second leaf. All died in August. The previous year I lost a Shaa Kar Pareh apricot on Citation in late May (it was nicked by a trimmer with prodigious sap flow common of Prunus species which likely contributed to its demise from root rot) and two cherries (Minnie Royal and Royal Lee) on Mazzard in mid-June all in their first leaf. All were growing quite well.

I knew Citation sucked as a rootstock in the Phoenix area and indeed you can tell the difference between it and other Prunus rootstocks. I am dismayed at the loss of the cherries on Colt.

http://cals.arizona.edu/backyards/articles/summer07/p8-9.pdf

http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2321/EPP-7621web.pdf

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_a/A229.pdf

Here is a link that might be useful: Cotton Root Rot AZ

This post was edited by Fascist_Nation on Fri, Sep 27, 13 at 15:59