This year’s drought has been quite reminiscent of the ones in 2011, except this one started earlier (and thus far seems to have ended earlier). Unlike the 90 plus days of 100 plus degree heat in 2011, this year’s number of super hot days was much lower (again, thus far), but because it started earlier, many trees still struggled or died. In fact, this was the first spring in my business’ 40 year history that I was calling my clients to recommend that they irrigate their trees.
Yet the good news is that probably because we had far fewer hot days, we have not seen near the tree losses state-wide that we did in 2011, when losses were in the millions. There were areas around Brownwood (aptly named after 2011) that had acres and acres of trees die (many of them junipers). Here in Austin, it seemed as if we lost 5 or 10% of the pecan trees on the east side, and even live oaks, the sturdiest tree in the forest, suffered significant losses, especially on high grounds. The area uphill from Barton Springs Pool, near the polo fields (better known as the overflow parking dustbowl) lost quite a few live oaks. So the losses were city- and species-wide.

Dieback in pecan from drought stress
The dieback shown here is typical of what is seen with drought stress. It may look very familiar to those who experienced the frozen hell imposed on us by Governor Abbott and his PUC cronies on Valentines Day 2021 (yeah, I said it- this is my damn blog!). It is not unusual for plants to have a similar reaction to very different problems; overwatering and underwatering can both make a houseplant’s leaves turn yellow. With drought though, there’s usually some browning on the edges of the leaves first. Continue reading