Almost two months no rain - do you water your mature trees (Center: live)

[riaelise]

we have eight large (25 plus feet) trees. Three red oaks, three live, 1 magnolia, and one Chinese pistache. Do y'all give them water or are they used to prolonged lack of rain and have adapted. These trees are at least twenty, thirty years. My arborist mentioned watering them after one month of no rain. We also have Italian cypresses, I've heard they are high water consumers. Anyone own those trees and do you give supplemental water. Thanks


Ps they do get some..scant water when lawns watered.

[cBach]

The oaks will be fine. The magnolia probably could use some water as they are used to wetter climates.

[Austin-HomeGirl]

you should water all of them. I heard on the gardening show on KLBJ AM this morning, even large established trees get stressed and the hair roots start dying if you don't water. He said it will shorten the life of the trees if you don't water deeply. Drought stress might not kill trees immediately but it might set them up for decline, insects and diseases and other problems in following years. He said water at least 1x per month to at least 6ft down. Remember, those big old trees have already had years of drought stress, additional stress makes the tree weaken

[ATX Wahine]

I've been watering our smaller trees (diameters of 6" or less) once a week for the past month. Yesterday we watered our big heritage oak with a sprinkler set low and I moved it every 30-40 minutes in a wide circle well around the tree for about 4-5 hours. I'll probably do it again in 3-4 weeks. Our water bill will be astronomical, but after watching too many of our oaks begin to falter due to years of drought (we had an arborist come out to inspect them and ended up sending samples to A&M to test for oak wilt - results came back negative for wilt but positive for a root-borne fungus caused by drought) we decided to step up our program of tree care. I use the LBJ Wildlife Center tree recommendations as a good resource.