Posts Tagged ‘fungicide’
Frantic About Fungus?
Friday, July 1st, 2011
Is There A Fungus Among Us?
The roller coaster weather pattern we experienced this spring switched back to prolonged wet and chilly weather last week. While the moisture was needed as soils were quite dry, the constant wetness creates ideal conditions for disease causing organisms. Disease causing organisms are natural inhabitants of the soil and infect grass plants when the environmental conditions are favorable or the plants become weakened by poor growing conditions. The pathogen is favored by warm, humid weather, wet or compacted soil, drought stress, and low mowing heights.
The spores of these parasitic forms of plant life are spread by wind, air, water, animals, people, insects and mowing.
Important steps to manage plant diseases include proper soil preparation, proper selection of grass seed including ones with a natural genetic resistance to diseases, and application of proper cultural practices.
If you have a fungus, spraying now with Dr. Earth Natural & Organic Fungicide effectively combats a broad spectrum of fungal diseases found in your lawn, on your vegetables, flowers & shrubs. Dr. Earth can be used both as a foliar spray for your plants or a soil drench for your lawn & trees.
Once you have sprayed the fungicide, you should then fertilize your lawn & your plants with Fire Belly Bio-Blast to reintroduce beneficial mycorrhizal fungi.
Healthy soils that have the ability to fight off disease causing pathogens increase the chances of plant survival and thus control the pathogens so they will not multiply in great numbers. Beneficial microbes fill up the available spaces in the soil so that pathogens cannot become established and destroy healthy plants.
Most lawns recover with changes in environmental conditions and proper cultural practices. For severe cases due to poor soil, poor grass selection, or excessive thatch, the best solution may be renovation. Please give us a call with any questions or to schedule a courtesy consultation for a lawn renovation.
planting for the future.
-By Maggie Oldfield Thayer Nursery
Most Un-Wanted: Cedar–Apple Rust
Sunday, August 8th, 2010
Wanted For: defoliating apple leaves & for just being gross!!
Description: bright yellow-orange-red spots on apple leaves and orange galls with ‘horns’
Hangout: juniper (eastern red cedar) & apple trees including crabapples
Kryptonite: Lime –Sulfur Spray, Home Orchard Spray
The fungus that causes this disease moves back-and-forth between Eastern red cedars (actually junipers) and both fruiting & ornamental apple trees. In order to complete its life cycle this fungus must spend part of its life on both. Therefore, it is possible to eliminate the disease by eliminating the cedars within the given area of the apple tree. However, the spores can be wind borne up to 2-3 miles, so eradication of the disease is often impossible or impractical. Nonetheless, if cedars are not too numerous on your property, the removal of junipers around the immediate apple tree can certainly reduce the spores reaching the apple foliage & fruit.
The spores drift through the air mostly at night and early morning. If it lands on the apple’s leaves & fruit and remains wet for 4-6 hours, the spores infect the leaves of the apple tree. After several weeks, yellow spots develop on the infected apple leaves and fruit. By mid-summer the spots appear slightly raised and light-colored & are visible on the underside of the leaf. Spores are released and the wind carries them to nearby junipers. Infected juniper needles and twigs show no symptoms of infection initially. Inspect them closely the next spring for small, green swellings (immature galls). The galls reach full size by the end of the next growing season but do not mature and develop the orange gelatinous tendrils until the following spring (about 20 months after infection.) This bizarre-looking structure is actually the fruiting stage of the fungus. The “horns” release the spores that infect the apple trees.
Many sulfur fungicides are effective against rust. Begin spraying in spring and repeat throughout the summer as needed. Spraying the juniper is not recommended because cedar-apple rust rarely causes significant damage to this host. Prune dormant galls from juniper during the fall, winter and early spring before the orange tendrils begin to erupt from galls.
planting for the future.
-By Maggie Oldfield Thayer Nursery
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