Over the past 35 years we have helped thousands of property owners and managers in Lancaster, PA and the surrounding areas with their tree service needs. Whether a Lilac in Lancaster Lancaster, a Yellowwood in York County, a Dogwood in Dauphin County, or a Linden in Lebanon County, we’ve seen our share of insects and mites destroying trees and shrubs in local landscaping.
Property owners and managers often see a symptom on one or more plant as color changes, leaves wilt, or growth seems stunted or even chewed. They are desperate to save their trees and shrubs and hope they can turn the situation around quickly. The fact of the matter is that most of these issues are somewhat predictable. Every tree or shrub you have in your landscaping has a particular set of pest problems it faces. Here are some of most common pest problems for plants that we see.
5 Notorious Pests in Lancaster, York, Dauphin, and Lebanon Counties
1) Bagworms: These larvae emerge in late spring as tiny worms that most people don’t notice until a month or more later. Although they are a fraction of an inch when they hatch, they immediately begin to feed voraciously. The plants that see the most damage are an assortment of evergreen trees and shrubs. Unlike a deciduous plant which they can occasionally feed on, evergreens aren’t able to flush out an entire new set of foliage a year after the damage. By the time the larvae reaches maturity months later, they are over an inch long. There are often hundreds, if not thousands of these pests on a single plant. Property owners will notice that the specimen is turning brown and are horrified when they walk near it to see it crawling with worms.
Property owners or managers sometimes attempt to hand-pick the pests to remove them. This works, but often some are missed and larger plants make this method impractical. Bagworms are fairly easily controlled by a tree service spraying a labeled material at the right time. If a thorough application is made just after bagworms hatch, this insect problem can be remedied and even prevented with one treatment each year. Trees and shrubs that bagworms often feed on are: Spruce, Arborvitae, and Leyland Cypress.
2) Scale: There are dozens of types of scale insects we find in our area. These insects are not like ones you typically imagine. They are very small and construct protective coatings later in their life that resemble a scale or shell over top of them. They often go unnoticed for years on trees and shrubs in landscaping around houses and commercial buildings and plants slowly decline. These insects feed through bark and leaf tissue to extract vital nutrients from the vascular systems of trees, shrubs, and some groundcovers and perennials. As scale insects feed, their excrement contains sugars from the plant. This can attract a high amount of bees to plants and also may cause black sooty mold to grow over plant tissues, which in turn tips off property residents that something is wrong with the plant.
Managing Scale insects on plants is done best throughout the year, every year. The key is to manage scale populations and keep them as low as possible. Frequent and timely Tree & Shrub Care treatments can keep Scale numbers from getting out of control and damage occurring. Creating a Plant Health Care program customized to your landscape’s unique challenges will make sure the right amount, right kind, and right-timed treatments occur. Certain varieties of plants such as Pachysandra, Cherry, Euonymus, Tulip Poplar, Maples, are just of the few primary targets of scale insects.
3) Mites: There are several common species of mites that feed on trees and shrubs in our area. Our tree service technicians often spray trees and shrubs, both evergreens and deciduous, for various mite issues. These pests are extremely small, with some of them not even to be seen without magnification. Mites will overwinter on plants and continue to reproduce throughout the year. Tens of thousands of mites will slowly extract valuable nutrients from these plants, making the color fade and foliage drop. It’s common that we are called onto the scene when a problem is so advanced there is little hope for a solution.
Mites need treated with a miticide and horticultural oil at specific times throughout the year. Repeated efforts on a regular treatment plan can help to keep mite numbers to a level where plant damage isn’t noticed. The more mite damage is showing on a plant, the more often they will need to be treated throughout the year. Certain species, such as Alberta Spruce, Hemlock, and Burning Bush, are known for having severe problems with this pest.
4) Woolly Adelgid: This pest is the reason we have lost so many of our state trees, the Eastern Hemlock, in Pennsylvania forests. This beautiful evergreen tree has become a choice that landscape designers and property owners add for a soft-textured tree on both residential and commercial sites. These trees can go a decade or more with little to no pest issues from Woolly Adelgid, but most hemlocks will face this foe at some point. The pest itself is very small but the visible, white, woolly egg sacs are apparent at the base and underside of stems. The resulting damage is loss of color and needle drop which hemlocks cannot repair. Affected hemlocks typically die 4-10 years after infection.
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid can be successfully managed by a tree service spraying trees with both horticultural oil and labeled insecticides at specific times throughout the year. In some cases, soil-applied systemic insecticides will also help to reduce this pest’s population. However, this can also increase mite populations so a tree service will also add miticide applications within the Plant Health Care program for your property.
5) Borers: There are dozens of types of wood-boring larvae that damage trees in our area. Each are specific to particular species of trees with little overlap. The flying adult stage of this insect often deposits eggs near the base or within bark cracks of trees. Most borers affect trees that are already facing some sort of other stress such as: other pest damage, drought stress, improper planting, or fertility problems. Keeping trees healthy and free from other problems will go a long way to ward off borers. Another species of borer that causes fatality in Ash trees is the Emerald Ash Borer. This pest has made a huge, destructive impact in both forests and suburban landscapes throughout our country.
A Certified Arborist can help you diagnose borer problems in your landscape and determine if there are curative or preventative treatments that are available for the particular pest you are facing. These treatments can be delivered by trunk injection, soil injection, or spraying trees as recommended for each borer species.
If you live in Lancaster, Lebanon, York, or Dauphin Counties in PA and would like a free consultation for the care of your trees we would be happy to walk your property with you and come up with a plan to take care of these most common pests, less obscure targets, and any disease or nutritional issues for your plants. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Let’s Talk About Your Tree & Shrub Care Needs!
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from Tomlinson Bomberger http://ift.tt/1UvHvAS
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