How is All This RAIN Affecting Your TREES?
Posted on June 28, 2019
Wet Weather Tree Problems
We are all seeing a lot of crab apples and birches with leaves turning yellow and falling off. Argh! What’s happening?!
Please, don’t panic.
Stacey Rayer, Lotus’s resident horticultural expert says:
“Too much rain has saturated the soil, and no oxygen is available to the roots, which is causing the leaves to drop. Especially in Ann Arbor where soils are heavy with clay. You may see 75% of a trees leaves fall off! But don’t worry, this does not mean the trees are sick or dying.”
She explained that when the weather dries out a bit the leaves may or may not come back this year. But the trees will be stressed, so we should be planning for fall when we can give them all a good fertilization.
Another problem in this wet weather is the spread of fungal diseases.
If you see dark spots or black curling leaves, this is likely fungus. We see this frequently on crab apples among many others.
Sycamores can also be affected by leaf anthracnose, a fungal disease that can look like angular brown areas, causing the leaves to fall off. Fungal diseases can’t be stopped once you see them, sadly. But, they can often be successfully prevented with fungicide sprays in the spring as new growth emerges.
We can do that!
What can you do?
- Clean up fallen leaves. Remove the leaf debris soon as you can. This prevents fungus from taking hold in the healthy wet leaves on the ground, and also slows the spread of disease from infected leaves to healthy plants.
- Schedule deep root Fertilization this fall. Healthy trees are more likely to bounce back from stress and better able to survive the onslaught of pests like fungus, as well as the creepy crawly ones.
- Sign up for preventative fungicide sprays in the spring.
Send Greenstreet a REQUEST for plant health care evaluation this summer. We can diagnose the issues and set up a treatment plan tailored to your trees and shrubs starting this fall.