The Tree Nerds offer fertilization services for trees and ornamental shrubs. It’s no surprise that the soil in Wilmington and the surrounding cities is sandy and low in nutrients. Some trees and shrubs struggle in these conditions, and we can help.

Common calls we get are: struggling live oak trees, yellowing palm fronds, and stunted crepe myrtles covered in lichen.

Chlorotic ornamental plants and shrubs like camellias, gardenias, and roses can be found everywhere. Signs of chlorosis include yellow leaves with dark green ribs. This is usually caused by a nutrient deficiency, especially iron. The tricky part is that if the soil pH is out of range, then your plant can’t take up what little iron there is in our local sandy soil because of pH nutrient lockout. So we have mixtures that include iron in a form that is readily accessible to the plant for short-term correction, but we can also adjust your soil pH to improve your long-term plant health.

We’ve developed a number of nutrient mixtures for the most common deficiencies we have found here over the years, but if you have strange or unexpected symptoms, we will submit soil, foliage, or root samples to the NC State lab for testing. Occasionally those lab results help us identify exotic problems, like phosphorus toxicity, or molybdenum deficiencies. Armed with lab results, we’ll be able to propose fertilization custom tailored to your plants and soil conditions.

We service:

• Wilmington
• Wrightsville Beach
• Hampstead
• Carolina Beach
• Kure Beach
• Leland
• Southport
• Oak Island
• Burgaw
• and more

Give us a call, or fill our our contact form, and we’ll be happy to set up a site visit to check on your trees and shrubs!