I know its a little late for this season, but our flowering crabapple trees looked so nice this spring, but, by late June they lost most of their leaves, and looked terrible! They are only a couple of years old, but my neighbor down the road says that his old crab tree does the same thing! Is it just the heat of summer, or do I need to add something to the soil to help them keep their leaves all season long? Thanks!

-- Joe A. (Threearrs@AOL.com), September 24, 2000

Answers

Joe, they should have kept their leaves til fall. Something went very wrong. The solution will have to start by figuring out what it was that went wrong. Drought? Very late and hard frost? Fungus? Other disease? Tent catepillars? Other insects? Nasty wind storm? Hungry deer?

As long as they get enough water, and your soil isn't totally worthless, you really shouldn't have to do anything for your crabapples. Ask around some more and see if you can't figure out what is happening. Without knowing more about the problem it is hard to know what to tell you to do. I suppose I'd make sure they've got plenty of water to go into winter/early spring with, and I might consider giving them a very diluted fertilizer or something very slow acting such as rotted manure or compost scattered around to the drip line since they haven't had their leaves to produce food for themselves.

See if you can find some other gardeners in your area to talk to, or try your county extension office. Your trees shouldn't be doing this, and they can't do it for very long before they die. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), September 24, 2000.

A lot of the crabapples here get like this, and I was told that it was blight. The treatment was something quite toxic. I don't know if there is any organic treatment or not. Perhaps if you search the web . . . .

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), September 24, 2000.

The flowering crabs I see when I go into town don't do this -- I don't know how they are being cared for, of course, but am sure it isn't normal. Try your extension agent or a master gardener if your area has that program (extension can tell you).

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 24, 2000.

My flowering crab and all the flowering crabs in my area - Quebec Canada did exactly as you have described this year. We had an unusually wet year and it was a rare gardner that got any tomatoes either. Due to a fungus. I don't have the answer, but I will leave my crab alone and see what happens next year! It is not normal that they lose all their leaves and look terrible.

-- Debbie (serendip@rocler.qc.ca), September 25, 2000.