Horticulture help... Plant disease

[Deacon923]

I am having a lot of trouble keeping plants alive in a couple areas of my yard, specifically in the beds nearest the house foundation. See photos. These are schip laurels which are crazy tough and grow like crazy on other parts of the lot. But here they are being attacked by something that rapidly and suddenly kills sections of the plant. These plants looked ok yesterday, today big sections are dying. Other plants have been completely killed. It's weird because part of the plant will look totally fine and even have new growth, while right beside it branches are dead. I am operating on the assumption that it is a soil fungus. No insects or fungus visible on the plant.

Ideas welcome. I am stumped.

 

[lbE08]

find a new place to pee.

 

[deacdiggler]

http://www.gardenality.com/Question...s-Wilting-Turning-Brown-And-Plants-Dying.html

 

[ImTheCaptain]

Soil test

 

[Biff Tannen]

Bears.

 

[deacdiggler]

Beets. Battlestar galactica.

 

[Ralph Medlin]

Not sure where you are but your state's land grant university should have a county extension office which will be able to help. Here's Forsyth County Extension's facebook page if you happen to be in Winston

https://www.facebook.com/ncce.forsyth/

 

[Biff Tannen]

Pretty sure he's in Greensboro, which makes it likely the plants committed suicide to end a life of boredom.

 

[ImTheCaptain]

 

[Deacon923]

well I had some time today, so I dug one of the sick plants up and took it out to the Ag Extension office. They were stumped too. We decided to send it to Raleigh for a full-blown plant autopsy/toxicology workup. It's worth the $20 charge since I'm sick of planting hundreds of dollars of plants only for them all to die. They say the report will be back in a week or so.

 

[Baconwfu]

The ground is sour

 

[ImTheCaptain]

well I had some time today, so I dug one of the sick plants up and took it out to the Ag Extension office. They were stumped too. We decided to send it to Raleigh for a full-blown plant autopsy/toxicology workup. It's worth the $20 charge since I'm sick of planting hundreds of dollars of plants only for them all to die. They say the report will be back in a week or so.

interested to see what they say. pretty cool service that's underutilized by homeowners

 

[Deaconblue]

The ground is sour

I was actually thinking just the opposite. That is the ground may be too alkaline from the concrete used in the mortar and wall construction. Haven't had time to check the preferred pH for this plant, but most laurels prefer acidic soil.