Photo: Joe Courson

It costs much more to have a dead tree removed from your yard than to water it enough to keep it from dying.

Tree experts say Georgia has a serious situation that needs
dealing with now. Don’t wait to start watering, they say. Many
trees are already close to dying.

“We’ve gone through two (years of) very severe
drought,” said University of Georgia scientist David
Moorhead. “We really haven’t had any letup, and if we get
into more dry weather this summer, we could really see some
problems with some of our large landscape trees.”

Tifton, Ga., tree surgeon Robert Lewis Stevenson said the long
drought has already given him a lot of work, and he expects even
more. “I’ve noticed a lot of trees dying,” Stevenson
said.

Tree Removal
Costly

Having a dead tree removed from your yard could easily cost
$500. But trees don’t have to die, Moorhead said, and homeowners
don’t have to pay big bucks to get them cut down. Something as
simple as a little watering can make a big difference.

“Getting into a good watering program to supplement the
natural rainfall can be very beneficial,” said Moorhead, an
Extension Service forester with the UGA Warnell School of Forest
Resources.

Many people don’t think about watering the big trees on their
property. So why start doing it now? Because we face having two
straight drought years stretch into a third, Moorhead said, and
many trees are in bad shape. They could die if they don’t get
enough water.

Rains Haven’t Been
Enough

Moorhead said the recent rains in Georgia haven’t been nearly
enough. He tells people not to wait any longer. Start watering
trees now, because they’ve started growing new leaves.

“Typically, what we want to do is water under the crown
of the tree,” he said. “That means we come back from
the trunk of the tree about 3 feet, and we concentrate our
watering from that point out to the edge of the drip
line.”

Photo: Joe Courson

You may have to adjust the yard sprinkler system to make sure
the trees get 1 to 3 inches of water each week.

Water at night, too, after 10 p.m. and before 8 a.m., when
trees really drink water. With nighttime watering, you lose less
water to evaporation, too.

But don’t water every night. “Fewer, heavier applications
really would be more beneficial,” Moorhead said.

Deep, soil-soaking watering works best. But even though your
tree may be huge, you don’t have to get the water too deep.

“Most of the tree roots are going to be in the upper 1
foot of the soil,” Moorhead said. “So we really need to
look at wetting that area, as opposed to doing any really deep
watering below 2 feet.”

In most cases, watering alone can save the trees in your
landscape. If you don’t, a tree surgeon may get to handle the
problem.