If your beech hedge dries up while everything in the garden is green and blooming, there is an urgent need for action. For various reasons, the leaves of hedge plants can turn brown in the middle of the season and parts of the plant can dry out. This guide will help you analyze the causes and provide tips for effective countermeasures.
What to do if the beech hedge has dried up?
If your beech hedge dries up, the causes could be drought stress, waterlogging, diseases or pest infestation. To save them, identify the cause and take appropriate countermeasures, such as thorough watering, soil improvement, or application of bio-fungicide or bio-insecticide.
Why is my beech hedge drying up?
If your beech hedge dries up in the middle of the season, the most common causes aredry stress, waterlogging, diseases or pest infestation. Meaningful evidence for the different causes are:
- Drought stress: weeks of drought, brown discolored leaves, falling leaves.
- Waterlogging: continuous rain, standing water on the root ball, soggy roots.
- Mildew: mealy-white, later dirty-brown leaf coating, brown leaf discoloration, ultimately dropping of the leaves.
- Mold: brown-rotten spots on all parts of the plant, later a gray, furry coating; Beech hedge wilts and dries up.
- Pest infestation: Aphids on the underside and upper side of the leaves, curled leaf edges, yellow-brown discoloration, dropping of the leaves.
What to do if the beech hedge dries up?
In coordination with thedetermined cause this is what to do if your beech hedge dries up:
- In case of drought stress: water the beech hedge thoroughly in the early morning or in the evening.
- If there is waterlogging: Work sand into the soil and stop watering the hedge plants for the time being.
- For powdery mildew: Cut off heavily affected parts of the plant; then spray the hedge repeatedly with a fresh milk-water solution or an organic fungicide.
- If there is mold: cut the beech hedge back to the he althy wood and strengthen it with horsetail broth.
- In case of pest infestation: Spray the beech hedge repeatedly while it is dripping wet with a soap and alcohol solution or an organic insecticide.
When is a dry beech hedge dead?
A dry beech hedge is hopelessly dead when the branchesbreak throughwhen bent andbrown-dried tissue appears under the bark.
But there is hope: very rarely all dried-out hedge plants die. Therefore, carry out theVitality Test in several places on your beech hedge. You can wait for new growth on hedge plants with flexible shoots and juicy tissue under the bark. You can clear areas of hedges that are verifiably dead and replace them with pre-grown hedge elements from the tree nursery.
Tip
Rejuvenation cutting saves dried-out beech hedge
You can save the dry beech hedge with a step-by-step rejuvenation. The time window for a radical rejuvenation cut is open from the beginning of October to the end of February. In the first winter, cut back one side of the hedge and the top by half to two thirds. In the second winter, focus on the other side of the hedge and the flanks. After each stage cut, fertilize the beech hedge with compost.
