IQ-tips: help save our fern!

In the past, I've dropped a lot of useful tips in this feature. Here are a few you might recall:

How to save money at the pump How to wash a sponge How to make free directory-assistant calls How to remove a bumper sticker from your car

But today I'm doing a twist on the IQ-tip and turning it around. You see, my wife and I bought a house back in April and there were 3 cute little tree ferns on the property. They looked as if they'd been there for decades. (The house was built in 1926.)

But over the past months, one has died and the other two have been slowly following suit. The worst part is, we can't figure out why. Not especially knowledgeable about trees and shrubs, we put our heads together and came up with an exhaustive list of ideas to help save the ferns:

1. Watering

You see the problem. So... anyone have any ideas? We think it's in the cyathea atrox family, if that means anything to anyone. Or maybe it's an Ostrich fern. I remember eating fiddleheads once as a kid, which I believe are the curled-up, immature fronds of Ostrich ferns. They were pretty tasty but I don't recall what the trunk of the Ostrich fern looks like. As you can see from my photos, these ferns have short-ish, stumpy trunks.