Bay Trees Looking Terrible - HELP!

Hi All
I have lots of bay trees and they all look absolutely terrible at the moment.
They are turning brown and the leaves are dropping off as you can see from the pics.
Some of the branches even look burned black.

We moved them 3 months ago when we moved house, but since then they havnt moved and have been up the side of our new house, where its less windy and they get some sun throughout the morning. They have looked so beautiful for the last few years, but now they just look like someone has set fire to them!

Can anyone advise anything?

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Glad you have mentioned about this. Our Bay has looked pretty healthy through the winter all things considered, however, now the warmer weather has arrived, its looking really sorry for itself. It is in an exposed area, and only now is it showing signs of problems similar to what shippo's bays look like.

I too would appreciate anyone's suggestions as to what is wrong!

 

Cor they do look bad, all this is beacuse of the bad winter, they may be ok .

Mine have had a batering as well but they are 20 years old so they should be a lot tougher but one side on each of mine looks like yours

Leave alone for now should be more frosts on the way it will help protect any buds developing.

late April go over each one, taking off all the dead brown leaves (take your time ) and wait for the new growth to start, I normaly feed mine with a slow realease fertiliser

They should pick up and as the season gets under way



Hope this helps



Spruce

 

I have a slightly different scenario. I brought mine from the UK as a 50cm babe, now 1,5 meters tall and I get sooty mould or whatever it is called every year and it looks horrid. My only resort is to wash every leaf each Spring ... oh, joy ...

PS I am in Southern Portugal ....

 

I think Spruce's advice is about all you can do at this stage .Be patient a while longer ..

Dave

 

You have scale insect that prouduces a sugary poo and the black stuff is a type of mould , you could spray but look at the label that it kills scale insect



Spruce

 

Hello lovely, your sooty mould is living on sugary poo that something is depositing on the leaves - quite often the problem is scale insects but aphids and others can have the same effect . If u can tackle the depositers of the honey dew the sooty mould should go. : )

 

Before the mild winter years, bay was always considered slightly tender, I think up till now thats tended to be forgotten.

Shippo, did you pot them up to move them, or have they been in pots always?

 

You took the words out of my mouth!

As has been said, leave them be, then clean them up when the shoots appear, but even if they still seem "dead" leave them alone. It often takes slightly tender plants like that a while (the whole year even) to recover and have a go at restarting.

You'll have to live with them looking scruffy in the interim I'm afraid.

 

Hi
I repotted them over a year ago at least 9 months before we moved and they did fine where they were before.

What do you mean by "Clean them up when the shoots appear" How do I clean them up?
And what do you mean by "Shoots"? there are little bay tree shoots growing out the the pots, which I never know what to do with? Sometimes O leave them alone, sometime I cut them off and throw them away. I've even tried repotting them, but they dont seem to do much.

Sorry, be gentle with me, I'm quiet new to all this.

 

As Spruce said earlier

The new shoots that will, hopefully, come from the buds in Spring.

 

Our bay which is about 25 years old and now a big bush was really hammered by frost and snow this winter. I've just cut out all most of the branches with brown leaves and will let it sprout anew.