Need help identifying cause of Lavender dying

[allbrobower]

Hello All! We are new to growing lavender and we need help identifying what is causing tons of our plants to die. Hoping someone can help identify what is killing them -

• We planted approx. 1000 plugs April 2022.
• We harvested our first lavender about 1 month ago.
• We live in N. Central Texas - we have had extremely high temps and very little rain (drought conditions) for the past couple of months.
• We first noticed the symptoms on a few plants back last fall and dismissed them as normal die off.
• First Symptomatic plants were sporadic - meaning not adjacent to each other. Starting in March 2023, we noticed symptoms seemed to "spread" mostly to adjacent plants but not always adjacent.
• We have drip tape irrigation at base of plants along rows.
• We did not water them from Summer of 2022 (after plugs were done establishing roots) through Beginning of July 2023 because plants were doing well until March/ April. Since that time, the issue has been getting progressively worse. We started watering the plants approx. 2 weeks ago - hoping to determine if drought is the cause of the issue. We have not seen improvement since watering a few times 2 weeks ago.
• Plants that don’t have any symptoms are growing and have signs of new growth.
• There are pests in plants – grasshoppers and spiders – but do not see any signs of predation on any foliage.

Here is our last Soil Analysis – FYI - When we created the raised rows prior to planning - we added crushed limestone to soil to aid in drainage.

• 66% sand
• 26% silt
• 8% clay

Classified Sandy loam

Organic Matter present - 3.16%

Does anyone have any thoughts on what is killing our plants.

 

[Consistency]

Since the ground is dead. Then nothing else will grow. Tilling the hard ground is required so it can retain some water and plants can spread their roots. Cover crops for the adjacent dead ground are also required.

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