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Oh no ! My dwarf Japanese maple leafbaby is dying !
Need some help with brown spots and curling leaf edges on our dwarf Japanese maple leafbaby
Okay so maybe we are being a little overdramatic. Our beautiful, well established, nearly 10 year old dwarf Japanese maple is sick. And knowing how beautiful it is (and expensive to replace like for like) we really want to do the best we can to save it.
From the pic you can see the spots and leaf curling
Initially based on our research we thought it might be sunburn, but the damage goes down to the undergrowth. So it's not that.
This leaves two possibilities.
Nutrition
Now, back in April we did a bad thing and hit the whole lawn with a bag of weed and feed. We don't normally, but the crabgrass was out of control, and in a moment of poor judgement, caved under the suburban pressure in the land of competitive lawn care that is northern New Jersey.
Now we come to realize nitrogen is really tough for maples. But since our scarlet beauty nearly touches the ground we didn't get too close to the root system, so maybe this isn't the problem, driving our figuring elsewhere.
A lack of minerals could be a culprit, maybe an iron deficiency. We've read recently that a mineral deficiency in the soil could be an issue. So we will try a folliar spray to see if that helps until fall fertilization time.
Disease
It's probably not Maple Tar Spot. The spots aren't turning black so we can rule out Rhystisma, for now.
Now there's a small chance it could be Phyllostica leaf spot but there are no spore structures.
What did with miss ?
We really want our dwarf Japanese leafbaby to be healthy. If you think there's anything else we should test, try or research we'd really love to know.
