Question
Hi, I bought and planted a sugar maple in sept. 2007 in southern NH.  It was about 8 feet tall and is about 11-12 feet now.  It grew like crazy this spring, up and out.  at the end of June I did landscaping work around my house, which included edging around this tree and laying bark mulch.  As I did the edging (which was only about 4 inches down and already had an outline around the tree from when I planted it) I noticed some roots, which I thought were from the grass that was starting to grow in the bark mulch.  Now I'm starting to wonder if they were tree roots, as I know Maples' roots are somewhat near the surface.  Of the new leaves that have sprouted, most have remained small.  I'm not sure if this is normal, given that they sprouted well over a month ago.  Today I noticed a few of the larger, established, leaves are totally brown. Might I have damaged this tree based on what I've explained?  I can send pictures if there's a way to do it.  I can't understand why there would be a few random brown leaves.  The others are green with just a little beetle damage.  I'll keep a close eye on it over the coming weeks, but any info you can provide would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Jay

Answer
Sounds like what you have done is pruned back the roots when you dug down the 4 inches. There is a balance between the roots and the foliage. The trees roots can support just so much foliage and if some are cut the reaction is to the foliage in smaller leaves and some dieback of the foliage. Sounds like this is what is happening here. The tree will recover if no more digging is done near the tree. This next spring I would fertilize the tree with 10-10-10 fertilizer at the rate of 1 lb per inch of trunk diameter scattered around the tree and watered in goo(if you fertilize just before a good rain you will not need to water it in). This will increase the overall health of the tree.