That doesn't look like yellowing. The crunchy bits are dead. The grass looks good, but that doesn't mean the trees are getting enough water. Dig a few inches deeper near the rootballs of the trees and get your fingers in there. If it's dry, they need more water than they're getting.

They may be planted a little too high and the water is running off instead of penetrating the root balls. You could build soil moats around them temporarily to ensure the water is getting to the roots.

Sadly, by the time damage is apparent on conifers, it is really bad. I hope they pull through.

I wonder too if they were under-watered during my absence. It is a bit peculiar that any tree that was planted between 0-2 inches looks fine and the ones with the yellow tops are nearly 4 inches above ground level. I also agree that it's not so much yellowing, as it feels like drying out of the foliage with loss of the green pigment and them turning to a pale color. I know they are a bit high. I have been able to control them by manually hand watering by garden hose on slow force for 5 minutes or so. There does seem to be some run off after about 2-3 minutes so I usually go to another tree and then come back and water some more. This morning, I dug to about 4 inches and still felt dry so gave it a good soak of the rootball. I also built a slight moat to help contain the water. I hope that does the trick. There is a little bit of sap on 2 of the trees where I see the bark is disrupted. This worried me for canker but it did not per say look diagnostic based on the prototypical images and description I found online. After I made this post, yesterday evening, a local arborist came by and said although not definitive, he did see the sap and bark disruption and said it might be canker. He did not feel optimistic. He said all we can do right now is wait and watch. Despite the soil feeling a bit dry, he did not seem bothered by it. I have heard of larger (mature) trees getting something called Arborjet injections and then recovering. I might get a second opinion. Not sure. Deep down I hope bringing them back to routine watering will do the trick. I really hope its not canker. Those suckers are practically a death sentence and even worse, replacing with a new tree is likely to reinfect with canker from surrounding trees, which means sooner or later the new tree would also die as well as surrounding uninfected trees. Fingers crossed.

Typo in original post. I had them put in October 2016 (not 2015).

Then I left for an international trip for 3 weeks. I returned yesterday on 3/3.

==>> let me impress upon you .. that things simply do NOT happen this fast with evergreens ... period ..

the injury or insult all relates back to delivery.. planting.. and water issues in the few months after planting ... imo ...

you need to perfect watering.. now.. and all thru the summer ... and in drought the year after ... by year 3.. they should be pretty much free range ...

by about june or july.. you will know what parts are dead.. and can prune them out ... the trees will look bare for a season or two.. but with water perfected.. they will fill back in ..

if you lose a leader ... then you will need to do a bit more pruning ... to insure.. over the next few years.. that you regenerate only one future leader .. not all that big a deal ...

do you have a warranty on these plants???

if i were to have planted 24 plants ... even with my experience level.. losing a couple would not surprise me ...

and if you have to replace some... you might want to think about replanting with other plants.. as a monoculture is rarely a good thing ...

finally ... i would kill all the grass around back and between the plants.. and mulch the whole area ...

ken

I do find the watering part challenging. I use to spray them from a distance about 3-4 feet away and the spray gave a range of 3 feet. I was getting some of the foliage at the bottom of the tree. Then I read up that italian cypresses don't like foliage to be sprayed so I changed to garden hose on low pressure. First 2-3 months I think I was doing about 2 minutes per tree out of fear of hearing that too much water might kill them. I spoke with an arborist and he said it needs a GOOD SOAK, more like 5 minutes. Sounds like I have been under-watering from the get go eh?

I considered killing the grass and mulching the whole area and then I thought if my trees fail, I will have a bare ugly area devoid of grass and without trees. Still contemplating it. I figured once the trees established I would mulch the whole area. I am assuming all that grass is competing with the trees despite being outside the root zone?

I don't understand the leader part. Please explain.

Going back to the delivery, planting, and watering. I will say that given there are 24 of them, and each one was fairly heavy... the guys that planted the trees, weren't always gentle...yanking and pulling on them.. and that did worry me. Where it comes to the planting bit. For few of the trees during the installation, the soil was compacted or stepped on. This might have contributed? Although I have no idea which ones had this happen since there was a crew of 4 guys working on several trees so I could only monitor so much at a given time.

I do have warranty and already have spoken with the nursery. It's a lifetime warranty and apparently they will cover the tree over the lifetime if it does not thrive. I am a bit surprised, but that's their word. I have two options. Replace them now and subject them to the stress of summer drought. Or wait, fix the watering, and see what happens...and then wait for fall and replace the dead ones in fall. The X factor is, I don't know if italian cypress recover much from this sort of multifactorial injury, and whether its better to wait and watch or replace them out and start from scratch. Of course replacing means an additional year to establishment. If you guys think these injuries are largely irreversible, I would want to replace any tree showing the crispy yellowing. Should I wait until end of summer and see what happens?

Replace in fall. Don't subject to summer heat stress.

Watering 2 minutes a tree doesn't sound long enough. The water needs to get down deep into the root ball. Like mentioned earlier building a saucer around the root ball will ensure that there is no runoff and the water will sink deep down into the roots. You can build the saucer using soil or mulch. I would remove it after 1 year. Mulch may be better to use because the soil over time will cover the root ball and you want the tree's roots to breathe.

The preferred way of watering a tree is to leave a soaker hose over the root ball for at least a few hours. This will allow the water to penetrate deep down.

I water my larger trees for at least an hour with my hose sprayer which I attach to to a hand truck, I aim it at the root ball. Every tree is different but in general a large tree will need a lot more water than a small one, especially in the summer time.

the guys that planted the trees, weren't always gentle...yanking and pulling on them

==>>> thats part of the smaller damage you are seeing ...

do you hae anywhere you could dig a hole.. and perk your soil . to find out how it drains???

https://www.google.com/search?q=soil+perk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

this is the first part of understanding how to water properly ....

as to tree leaders ... read this ... then ask some narrow questions ...

https://www.google.com/search?q=soil+perk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=tree+leaders&*

presumably... you put the trees there for a reason,.... and most are doing ok...so why would you ever go back to grass .. besides.. grass is one of the most invasive weeds on the face of the earth.. lol .. you can regrow grass in a few weeks at the right time of year ...

btw... i dont see any weeds... and mulching is an even better idea.. if you treat your lawn for weeds .... you do not want that stuff.. on or under your plants ...

ken

I was going to say, based on the pictures provided and nothing else, a case of rough handling. You might hope for better, indeed that's what you think you pay for, but if planted as 8' ...yeah, there's some rough handling going on.

Watering as described...yeah, nowhere near sufficient. However, fall planting is different than summer. I have still never gone through a deep south winter, so i'll leave specifics to others.

If you indeed have a lifetome warranty, i'd be tempted to do some trimming and take the wait and see approach. I see little that shouldn't come back to form in a couple years if the dead is pruned and the plant gets some shearing to help it fill in. However, that is your call, not mine.

I'd look into some dripline.

Rough handling is responsible for a lot of the damage and lack of timely watering for the rest. I'd have a talk with the nursery that planted them. Some workers there need an education, reprimand, and better supervision. Don't let the nursery try to convince you rough handling is not responsible for a lot of the damage.

Update:

I had a second arborist come out and give an independent and unbiased opinion. They said half my trees had Seridium Canker and all of them have twig blight fungal infection. They said Seridium Canker cannot be treated and recommended pruning the main trunk 3-4 inches below infection point ... which is basically where live branches still remain with green. They said twig blight is fairly bad and of the trees need antifungal spray application 3 times, 2 months apart. The quote to have the prune and apply the fungicide was nuts...over a grande. I'm thinking I will remove the dead foliage and prune myself. My concern is that if I chop of my 10 foot tree stem down to a 3 or 4 foot stem (top it off), will the italian cypress still grow?

Has anyone on this forum gone through with drastic pruning and fungicide measures? If so, did your trees recover well and do the topped off trees grow?

The arborist does not think watering was an issue and also said half of my trees have already rooted in (its only been 6 months). Surprised they root in that fast?

That level of damage was due to "rough handling" only if they were unloaded from the truck and thrown onto the planting site by King Kong.

Ravipate, did your expert mention any other problems in your area due to the weather? North of Dallas, the wind chills went -3 F during that arctic front. Temps went down to 6F in case you were out of town.

There were also lots of surges, freezes and 90 degrees in the same week. We have a huge amount of mature (over 20 feet) dying and every expert that we talked to had a totally different opinion.

One said root rot because of all the record rain a couple years ago that had been brewing, another said that they were too dry because of this dry winter, etc., etc.... I do have a meter to check the moisture.

Our other cedars are having problems too. But the roses came through it great, go figure!

My overwatered Italian cypress start dying from the bottom and bottom half, so yours maybe too much water or spider mites

Hmmm....mine started dying from the top and it's still happening unfortunately. Some of the bottoms are still alive but it's not looking promising.

Lavender:

Some folks did mention that we had a deep freeze during that time. I don't think it fell to negative, but with the wind chills it is possible.

Yes. Both experts who looked at my trees had somewhat differing opinions. In the end, I assumed that all of what they said were possibilities, and tried to address pretty much all of it by casting a wide net.

Progress update:

I did extensive pruning for Canker, just as suggested by arborists. Cut back about 3-4 inches on the main trunk. Removed all the branches with die back. Removed the crispy foliage. Immediately picked up all branches, dead foliage flakes, and debris and disposed of it. 2-3 days after, on a dry day with no rain on the forecast, they came and sprayed it with antifungal spray. Then again 2 months later had them come out and do another antifungal spray. The spray is for blight; not canker.

Boy, do they look short and bare at this point. Most of them lost 3-6 years of growth, assuming there is average 1 foot growth per year. Yay, sort of defeats buying them at the large size...but it is what it is...you just make the best of it and move on.

I gave slow release fertilizer evergreen stakes in mid spring and gave again recently in mid fall. About 2 or 3 stakes about 2.5-3 feet apart, and about 2 feet from trunk base.

Through the summer, got some decent rains on and off. Not really a drought. Thank god.

Every now and then, a few small branches would die and I would prune immediately (also when pruning, you have to dip pruning tool in bleached water to sterilize in between each cut...that's a lot of dipping I tell you). One of the totally healthy appearing trees suddenly had sudden onset die back within 1 week at the top (like most of the others before), and had to prune off about 3 feet off main trunk. Also, about half of the trees have noticeable prominent cracking/tearing in their main trunk. Not just on the bark, but appears to run deeper into the body of the trunk.

Current feelings are mixed on the progress:

Positive: The die back appears to have slowed down pretty good. The foliage is filling in nicely. Few inches vertical growth since March/April extensive pruning. It appears, the trees that I had to cut few feet off, have selected leaders, and those leaders are showing rapid new healthy growth.

Negative: The prominent cracking/tearing in the main trunk is something that was not there before. I have a bad feeling these cracks will progress and eventually hit a critical point and those trees with totally die.

On a side note, Taylor junipers are supposed to be pretty good substitutes...if these cypresses indeed fail.

Thanks for the update!

We had brought in a lot of new Eastern red cedars that immediately died so I still wondered if they brought in some disease to the previously health Italians or if it was just the unfortunate weather events that were too much.

I'll check out the junipers that you mentioned, thanks!

Hello I really appreciate all this information. I have 3 potted Italian cypress trees (3ft tall in pots) in Las Vegas Nevada and I was originally hand watering 3 gallons each tree once a week. But they are now feeling dry and crunchy although still green. Do I need to modify to watering 3 times a week?

they are grown in a peat fast drying soil from the wholesale nurseries so you have to keep them moist. I found buying them in the bigger 5 gallon size they are easier to get started in the hot deserts.

thanks. What is your watering rate? How many gallons? How many times a week?

5 gallon sized pot bought growing in ground at first I watered every two weeks 2 gallons, now a few years later do exactly the same