WASHINGTON —
Unusual weather conditions last winter and this spring appear to be continuing into the summer months.
Daviess County Ag and Natural Resources Extension Educator Scott Monroe attributes some uncommon tree problems he’s seen this spring to the aberrant weather. He said there’s been an uncharacteristically high amount of fire blight and scale.
“I think it’s an oddity brought on by the unusual weather,” Monroe said. “I’d say a part of it is the warm weather we had this winter. Conditions were not conducive to winter kill of insects. We came into spring with higher populations.”
The elevated populations and earlier introduction this year allowed for more reproductive cycles and, subsequently, even greater populations, he explained.
Monroe said there’s been an enormous scale infestation on tulip poplar trees this year. Scale is a small insect that feeds on the trees. They excrete “honeydew,” a shiny, sticky substance people then find on their cars, homes, sheds, and anything else that sits outdoors under the trees.
“It can be unsightly,” he said. “It has sugar in it, and secondary fungi attack and make it unsightly.
“Another thing I’ve seen that’s kind of unusual is cottony maple leaf scale, an insect that feeds on maple trees. It puts out a cottony egg sac behind it that looks like mini cotton balls. I’ve seen heavy infestations on a couple trees.”
Fire blight, a bacterial infection in less resistant varieties of apples and pears, is something else Monroe said he’s seeing a lot. The disease causes branch tips to turn brown and leathery sporadically throughout the tree.
“Normally, neither will kill the trees,” he said. “Where I have a concern, especially with scale, is it’s pulling sap from the tree. In addition to the drought, it could be too much stress on a tree.”
He said compromised trees will become more attractive to insects to feed on, and garden plants also have the potential to be an insect banquet this year.
“I could see these things creep in if plants start to become stressed,” Monroe said.
To manage affected plants or help prevent healthy ones from becoming insect food troughs, Monroe recommends making sure plants are healthy and not overly stressed. Irrigation helps, he said, and suggested 1-1.25 inches per week. He said home gardeners can use a sprinkler and rain gauge.
In the case of diseased plants, he said, as leaves fall in the autumn, rake and destroy them as soon as possible so the disease doesn’t overwinter in the yard to start over next year.
There are some products containing imidaclorprid available at local garden centers that can be applied in a soil trench, he added.
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Sandbars, like this one on the White River near Elnora, are appearing in the White River where the water level is lower than usual. Kelly Overton
Discussion
Trees suffer some due to 'odd' weather
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