Gardening and Horticulture - Can my hemlock tree be rescued ?

Not sure what genus this hemlock is.... highest branch is about 30 feet... twin trunks growing together with circumference about 16” at ground level, so diameter aboutt 5”...

The plant was doing quite well until about 10 days ago with good green foliage.... Today it is looking very poor, with half the foliage looking dead and rust colored...

Possibly salient factors:

(a) Maybe I put too much HollyTone on the ground around it, about 20 days back.

(b) The tree is growing right next to a very aggressive bush type plant with hollow branches that grows very fast... up to three feet a year... with hollow tube like limbs.... a friend thinks it is a Viburnum. It reaches a height of up to 12 feet if uncut and spreads its limbs a long way fron the trunk... the trunk is a collection of about 20 small trunks ... not sure if is Eskimo Viburnum or Blackhaw Viburnum or some other plant.

While the Hemlock was doing well (November to mid-May) the Viburnum was dormant.


Any ideas for rescuing the hemlock ?

P.S. Right now I am:

(c) watering it heavily, using Aquazoom sprinkler and Melnor 6 cycle timer to give 6 tranches of water per day, each tranche consisting of 2 minutes on, 10 minutes off, totalling about 1 hour per day of sprinkling in a 20 foot box around the tree. Is this too much water ?

(d) have started to spray foliage and trunk with diluted MiracleGrow (diluted to one quarter strength).


P.P.S. Would it be a good idea to sprinkle some gypsum around the tree to counteract any excess Holly Tone ? Or is this risky ?

Will greatly appreciate advice.

It may be worse than that:

http://www.chronogram.com/backIssues/2002/03%20march/notebook3.htm

This is quite a problem in your part of the country.

Hope this helps.

Hi Chris

Many thanks for responding to my question.

However, on visiting the link you suggested, I found you were thinking mine is a Canadian Hemlock, which it definitely is not... In the front yard I do have a canadian hemlock and the foliage is totally different....

The tree I am talking about... a friend has told me is a hemlock of some kind , but not what subspecies it is, and I don’t know for sure whether it’s really a hemlock or some other kind of evergreen.

To clarify what kind of tree it is I took some fast and dirty videocam footage and extracted images that I've sent to your private email address (this forum does not seem to accept images). One image is the longshot titled “Wholetree.jpg” that shows a skeletal looking tree about 20-30 ft high.

The other image is a closeup of the foliage, which shows evergreen type leaves with some green and some turned reddish.

QUESTIONS: (1) Can you determine what kind of tree it is (is it really a hemlock or something else?). (2) Can you tell me how to treat the tree to save it ?

Will greatly appreciate your help with this.

Regards

Bob Lightbourne

P.S. If these videocam images are too fuzzy please tell me and I’ll get some high-res pix with my 20 yr old Minolta 35mm camera.

I can be surprising how one jumps to conclusions about things. As with everyone else, I suppose that I think about what is familiar without any other directions. Many plants have local names that sometimes belie their true identities. That makes things more challenging.

I will be glad to take a look at the photographs whenever they come.

Many thanks for your very rapid response Chris. I just now sent the pictures to your chris@fite.com email address. I tried to keep filesize small. Hope the resolution is good enough.

Regards

Bob Lightbourne