We planted a cedar hedge this spring (4 months or so ago). The trees were fine this summer, some of them had one or two dried branches; nothing out of ordinary. At the end of the summer, some trees started to have yellow foliage. A quick search online lead me to believe this was the cold hardening process. Although, lately, we had a lot of rain and the foliage started to dry from the center of the tree toward the outside. (Inner foliage is mostly affected right now.)
Almost every day I check the soil's humidity and it is humid at less than one inch dept. I'm starting to think that they have too much water and maybe not enough air. My parents planted a cedar hedge before and I don't remember the trees drying like that on first year.
Is there something I can do about this or am I simply over protecting my cedar hedge?
As requested, here's a few pictures:
This is the overall look, there's a lot of dried areas.
This one is the worst of the group. As you can see, the inside is almost all dried out; only the outer foliage is still green.
The average one...
This one has some yellow foliage.
Update - Oct 2014
This year, the same thing happen at about the same time (sep-oct). Over the summer, everything was fine. By the end of September, I added some autumn lawn fertilizer. The week after trees started to dry form the inside again. I think the autumn lawn fertilizer is the culprit. Next year, I won't put any fertilizer on my lawn after July. If my cedar hedge doesn't dry out, it will confirm my doubts.
I tried the pH test and it was about 6.5ish, which seems to be normal.
