HELP MY BAY TREES

[PollyPerky]

Help please. I am a reasonably good gardener but my bay trees are bothering me. They are turning yellow and leaves falling.

I have had them about 5-6 years, they are 4 feet high and about 2 feet wide- standards either side of a door on a sheltered south facing patio. They have grown well and were healthy but over the past month or so a lot of leaves went yellow.

I thought it might be drought so watered them more, then I've fed them with a liquid plant food- nothing special. Do they need repotting maybe or some blood, fish, bone meal type of feed? There are no bugs on them and the leaves are healthy apart from losing colour.

They are worth about £100 each so really want to save them.

Repot vote here. Or take out of pot, shake off soil and renew potting compost. Not a good idea to overwater in the winter. Good luck.

Have they all gone completely yellow,or just some? or in patches? or from the edges of the leaves inwards?
It could be a lot of things, is this their first feed?

Takes 9 minutes to show what could be done in 3, but there you go:

Have you been picking any of the leaves? When mine get a bit sad looking and the leaves change, I pick a few leaves every couple of days and it seems to perk back up.

Thanks everyone. I have repotted in John Inness No3 in the hope they will grow. same pots but shook off as much old compost as possible.
They are not yellow all over but they did have about 10% totally yellow leaves which fell off and some healthy ones were starting to fade too.

If that fails could you plant in the ground? I had a very sad, almost bald, bay in a pot that is now a splendid garden bush even though it's growing in a narrow bed.

It might be vine weevil grubs in the soil eating the roots, they can sometimes be a real container pest. You can get stuff to water the soil that will kill them.