Plant reactions to the drought vary, but care is needed

The advantage to knowing how and why plants are acting the way they are may prevent you from wasting water or taking other
environmentally inappropriate action to address the symptoms you are seeing.

Cedar elms are very well adapted to the hot dry summers of South Texas. Their familiar reaction to weather where they are having trouble functioning in excessive heat and drought is to drop their leaves early.

The leaves gradually turn yellow and become covered with leaf spots and drop from the tree just like it was November.

This action can occur in August or September. The tree seems to say “it’s just too unpleasant for me to function in this weather, I am going to defoliate early this year.”

There is no action to take once the leaves begin their decline.

The tree is perfectly healthy and will put on new leaves next spring. Adding water or fertilizer will not prevent the drop.

Many figs have dropped their fruit and most of their leaves. Watering them deeply once per week may encourage them to re-leaf for a short time this autumn.

The better strategy might be to provide a deep irrigation every three to four weeks, just enough to maintain a few leaves and their roots.

Then if normal rainfall patterns return as predicted this fall, the fig will re-leaf for the 2010 growing season.