Our urban forest can be a challenging environment for the trees within it. Urban environments can create many stresses for our trees compared to their natural settings. It is our responsibility to care for those trees so we can all be awarded the benefits they provide to our health, communities, and local wildlife and ecology.
Our Plant Health Care Department can help with many of these urban stresses throughout the growing season. We provide a wide arrange of injections, sprays, or soil enhancement treatments that will help your trees thrive. Spring is a busy time of year for many of our treatments as fungal diseases can be abundant in our urban forests. Some of the most common fungal diseases that we deal with are apple scab, hawthorn rust, anthracnose, and diplodia. Apple scab is one that stands out for the Crabapples trees. Crabapples have a beautiful Spring flower, which is the reason for them being so prevalent in our urban forest. If the Apple Scab isn’t treated, you will notice your Crabapples to begin losing their leaves early in the season, sometimes as early as late June or early July.
All of the above fungal diseases have treatment schedules that consist of multiple sprays, with the first round beginning in the Spring. The severity of all of these fungal diseases are dependent on weather conditions, with rainy and cool weather leading to heightened levels of infection in our urban forest. The past few Springs have been these conditions very much so and staying on top of treatment applications for your trees will help sustain their beauty throughout the season.
Another major application that we do in the Spring, which is intended to help your trees later in the growing season, is our dormant oil application. This is an application intended to affect overwintering insects on your trees as they emerge in the late Spring and Summer. Believe it or not, but many insects overwinter on your trees and as the temperatures begin to rise, they begin to emerge to feed and mate. A dormant oil application can prevent them from emerging, thus reducing the potential of impact and infestation. This is a non-toxic application which has been found to be very effective on many insects, including scale insects. The target timing for this application is prior to the tree buds swelling and the insects emerging. In 2020, we anticipate starting these applications as early as the week of March 9th.
These couple diseases and applications are just a sliver of what our Plant Health Care Department team works on throughout the growing season. Our ISA Certified Arborists are happy to visit your property and provide the best recommendations for the care of the trees on your property. As goes with any issue, the sooner we identify it and begin treatment, the better chance of success and efficacy of those treatments. So don’t forget about the trees in your landscape and thank you for helping to enhance our urban forest!