Salix Kilmarnock - What to do if you think it's dead.

I've been writing about Salix Kilmarnock for almost a decade now, and I am still getting new questions on the subject!

In the past month I've had two separate enquiries from people whose Salix 'Kilmarnock' is either apparently, or mostly, dead.

Firstly we have this one:

Small, but cute, in a nice pot: and apparently rather dead.

The owner ("Hi, Begona!") says that this one started to put out new leaves in spring, as normal, but then they went yellow and dropped off.

Here's a closer look - right - and the bad news is that all those branches are reddish-brown or grey, instead of being green: this coupled with the total lack of leaves, means that, unfortunately, they are probably quite dead.

This is seriously bad news, obviously. 

Begona read my various articles on Kilmarnock, in particular the one about One Last Chance, where I detailed my experience with a medium-sized Kilmarnock which had been neglected for several years, and which I returned to health and full weeping-ness by a regime of brutal pruning (*laughs*).

She asked if there was hope for this little fellow, and I advised her to follow the suggestions in the article, and to remove everything which was clearly and absolutely dead, even though it would leave her with not much more than a pollarded "knuckle" at the top of the stem.

As her tree was in a pot at the front of her house, I also suggested moving it out of sight, round the back of the house,  until it either recovered or died: this was for two reasons. 

Firstly and most obviously, no-one wants to look at an apparently dead tree for weeks on end! Being on the front of the house, it was a bit visible. 

Secondly, and this is a slightly cunning ploy on my part, by moving the pot to the back of the house, it gives the tree a different set of living conditions.  My reasoning is thus: in the front garden, it died. Maybe it was too hot, too cold, too windy, too dry: maybe local cats kept peeing on it: who knows. But by moving it to the back of the house, it will experience a different environment: it may be warmer/cooler/wetter/more sheltered, so maybe it will stand a better chance of recovery, in a different position.

The second one belongs to Linda (*waves*) who says that her smallish Kilmarnock was getting completely out of hand, so last year she cut it back to an umbrella shape, and all the leaves immediately curled up and died.

Disaster! Why did this happen? I have no idea. There are many reasons why trees suddenly die, and it might have had nothing to do with the pruning.

Then, recently, Linda saw my articles on the subject, and followed the suggestions: she cut back all the dead material, watered it well, and lo! and behold, it started to sprout.

This is very good sign - there is life in the little lady yet! 

So Linda's first question was about the few remaining stumpy branches - should they be cut off, as they are not sprouting?

Yes.

They aren't producing leaves, so there is no point keeping them, and they might as well be cut back sooner rather than later, while you can still see what you are doing, before those new shoots obscure them.

But then, a couple of weeks later, Linda updated me on progress: the new leaves were covered with blackfly, there were ants all over the place, and some of the new leaves had big holes in them, which looked like snail damage.

Oh no!

She whipped out the systemic bug spray, and gave the plant a lot of watering, and wondered if there was anything else she could do to help it.

Well, the black fly are just a fact of nature, they fly in whenever they spot tender fresh new leaves and they have clearly zoomed in this one, and Linda has done exactly the right thing by spraying with systemic bug spray. Once the but spray has dried, or before spraying, you can also jet-blast the aphids with the hosepipe on its narrowest setting, to physically remove the bulk of them.

Ants are there because they are feeding on the aphids (the black fly) so getting rid of one will help to get rid of the other: I suggest puffing ant powder up the stem, so that they track through it as they trundle up and down. Obviously, wait until the stem is dry after the jet-blasting....

All Willows are very receptive to watering, and I would certainly suggest giving any distressed Kilmarnock a good soaking once a day for a couple of weeks. To avoid the snails (which are attracted by the nice damp soil, annoyingly), water first thing in the morning if you can: that way, the tree gets the benefit while actively growing during the day, and the water is all absorbed within a couple of hours, so you are not creating a damp environment overnight, which would otherwise delight the snails. 

I'm not sure if Linda's Kilmarnock is in the ground, or in a pot: but a lot of them are grown in pots, so I'll add this comment:

Pots are a very unnatural environment for a tree: they are cut off from the soil, isolated in a tiny mini world of their own, dependant on us for water, and are generally more likely to struggle, than if they were in the ground. But there are things we can do to help them - so if your Kilmarnock is in a pot, check out this article Cruelty to Trees: Pots  and see if you can improve the situation for it. 

In both of these cases, I would think that the recent weather is responsible: we have had a couple of bad winters in succession, and this one (2022/23) was particularly bad for plants - in fact, I don't know anyone who has not lost plants this year. Not a single person. 

We had mild weather, then hard frosts, then a hot spell, then more and yet more frosts: last year we had drought through much of the summer, after a horrendously wet winter: all these extremes are very difficult for plants. They don't get time to adjust, before the conditions change again. It's very hard on them.

Hopefully both of these Kilmarnocks will recover: and hopefully, if you have one that looks a bit like these guys, well, this article might give you some pointers as to how to deal with them - and some hope!

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