Fertilizing would help them recover - if they need it. You should really sample your soil and have it analyzed, otherwise you are just assuming a particular product is appropriate. Those ratios you listed all represent different amounts of primary nutrients, often a soil only needs to have one of these supplemented - let along a payload of multiple nutrients, a few or more in high amounts. Soilless potting media are much more apt to become badly leached of multiple nutrients than an actual soil, thus 19-6-12 etc.

(I have also posted this in the tree forum) Two years ago we had a very late freeze after all of my trees, except for the beech, had leafed out and last year we had the 17 year cicadas. To my surprise the cicadas seem to have done far more damage to some of my trees than the late frost did. All of my 4-8' japanese maples, kousa dog woods, stewartia and american holly have significant damage with many losing over 50 percent of their branches. I have a 7' x 7' 'Gold Star' kousa that is almost dead and several others that will look terrible for years to come. It seems like the cicadas damage the plant's smaller branches enough to cause desiccation of the branch. Because the cicadas like pencil size wood only smaller trees seem to have been effected to this degree. Very small younger plants and plants with thin banches such as acer palmatum Murasaki Kiyohime were also unharmed by the cicadas. Did any one else see a similar pattern of damage? David

Did you check for any life anywhere in the bark up and down the tree? You can use your fingernail and check for any green, but actually with Japanese maple you can see if the tree is alive as it goes from green to brownish-red where it is dead. If it has any life, you might be able to save it but may need to cut it back quite a bit and protect from direct sun. We had two in a pot on the deck that burned and leafed out again when moved to our garage to recooperate. Good luck, let us know what you find out.

The weather this year has really be devastating as has already been discussed. I am concerned about what the winter brings. My 3 crepe myrtles lost some limbs but are now blooming. Both of my rose bushes lost limbs. One is a yellow climber and it lost all but 2 limbs and I have had to cut it back drastically. It has had only 3 blooms. The other one I had to cut back to the ground but it has come back somewhat. The drought is really hard on the veggie garden. Even with me watering 3-4 times a week I see distress. You can only water so much. It hasn't affected the zuchini though. I've had about 4 bushel off of 3 plants. It looks like it was fed steroids. :) The only thing that seems to like the drought is my black eye susans. They are blooming profusely... I drive Pellissippi Pkwy. every day and off in the distance you see quite a few of yellowed trees and the daffodils did not bloom along there this year as they have in the past. Lets hope we get lots of slow rain soon.