Help determining what is wrong with my baby apple trees!!
Hi Reddit, I have two apple trees (Jonathan and Ruby Darling) that are suddenly browning and losing leaves! Gonna add a ton of info just to rule everything out:
I planted in late March this year. Bought them from Stark Bros nursery. They were not bare root, they were "Easy start" because the specific varieties I wanted weren't available bare root. But I gently rinsed the roots off and planted them diy bare root lol so I could make sure there would be absolutely no girdling. They're planted in an area that gets full sun all day. Clay soil, but I made the holes significantly bigger than needed and mixed in a light amount of compost and other soil from a different part of the yard to help soften it up a little. Covered the area surrounding them with a thick mulch, but left a hole around their trunks so the mulch doesn't touch. The graft is also safely away from the soil and mulch! I deep watered about once every week and a half, always checking the soil first with a moisture meter and it never left the "ok" middle position. This spring has been unsually warm (70s/80s but 40s at night) and rainy for my area, but it's an extremely light rain. We're not even getting 1/4in per day, if it rains that day at all.
For about a month they were doing fantastic, growing new leaves very quickly. I'm in zone 6A and we did have 2 snowstorms shortly after planting but they trucked through it like nothing happened. About 2 or 3 weeks ago, sorry I'm a bit iffy on the timeline, we had our last frost. No snow though just slightly below freezing temps overnight. Shortly after that, I noticed the tips of some of their leaves browning but I assumed it was frost damage.
Fast forward to now, I just got back from a short weekend trip to see they have lost all of their lower leaves and the remaining ones are significantly worse off than before. I am afraid they're dying and I want to save them! Pictures attached, please help me figure out what is wrong! First 5 pictures are the Ruby Darling which is doing much worse, last 5 are the Jonathan.
Any advice or guesses helps, thank you!! These are my first trees and I'm fairly new to gardening but I thought I was doing everything right!