Almost all the trees around our property have nasty round brown or black fungus-y spots on the leaves, no matter what the species. Is this just because we have had a very wet year?
Will the trees be fine in the spring when they put out new leaves or are my trees in the kind of trouble that requires expensive treatments.
These trees are from patches of woods surrounding a country property, not planted specimen trees.
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You left out some information, like where (in the world) you live and how long you've lived on that particular property. If you have access to that info, it would add greatly to the ability to provide answers.
Jenny, you didn't mention what kinds of trees you have, but I had the same problem with my sycamore and dogwood during some years. When my ex-wife and I were young and gullible, we paid some "expert" to stick these little plastic injection things into the trees. I don't recall what time of year it was. The trees looked better the following year, but we hadn't had a very wet spring or summer, either, so there's no reliable way to say what the improvement was due to. As we read more and became better gardeners, we began to notice trends. In years when the trees had ugly leaves, we also had more problems with our cucumbers, for instance. But, when we looked at pictures of the property taken when we first moved in, it was obvious that the trees had done fine.
By the way, the tree expert predicted that the dogwood would be dead within a couple of years if it wasn't medicated. A little reading about dogwood habitat indicated that the original homeowner had planted the tree in a dumb place: Two feet from a blacktop driveway. Nice and hot - not where a dogwood belongs. We decided THAT was the tree's biggest problem, not the occasional fungus attacks. Matter of fact, when we made it a habit to soak the ground around the tree during hot weather, it looked much better. It's still alive.
I think you have to look at the overall health of the trees, and sort of take an average. I'd also contact a local cooperative extension and see if they have any thoughts on what's going on in your area. While it *is* possible there's something going around that can be treated, you want to find out if it's worthwhile first, preferably from someone who doesn't have anything to sell. And, of course, you never want to spray poison around your property unless there's no other choice.
If you have a county extension agent, he/she will most likely accept a sample of the problem and identify it. Are the leaves crisping black on the edges along wiht the spots?
More than likely you have a bunch of maples on your property line and they all have tar spot, or a combination of tar spot and powdery mildew. If this is the case, they will be fine.
I'm not sure we have county extension agents here in MA. I've never heard anything about one and I read everything local. I also think I read that the ag school at UMASS doesn't do soil tests anymore.
The edges are fine. It's just splotches. And, yes, lots of maples are affected, particularly saplings in the wetter part of the property. But I also have seen splotches on a bunch of what I think are black birches and chestnut saplings and a couple of other things I haven't figured out what they are.
I'm going to hope for the best, since there are far too many trees to go squirting them. I did the same thing Doug described with a bunch of trees at a house I owned in a suburb years ago. I got talked into a very expensive oil treatment that supposedly was all that could keep my 40 foot blue spruces from immediate death. I drove by that house a few years ago. The folks who bought the house from me sixteen years before had let it deteriorate into a no-maintenance slum, but it still had gorgeous tall blue spruces all around. Either that was one powerful treatment I paid for, or the trees were just fine.
Leaf spot diseases such as anthracnose and tarry spot are quite common on trees in the northeast after a wet spring. They don't look good but usually do no real harm. While they could be prevented by repeat applications of fungicides there is really no point to it unless you were trying to present unblemished nursery stock to customers. Next year if we have a wet spring it will happen again. Find your cooperative extension office and ask em to mail you a leaflet on it. Or do a litle web searching on the .edu sites that cooperative extensions sponsor. The UCONN one is pretty good.
As a result of the land grant colleges and in cooperation with the USDA there are extension offices in every county of every state. Something Lincoln came up with. If you look in the govt pages of your phone book it is likely you will find yours.
"Details about the various diagnostic services offered by UMass Extension can be found below. Please note that the majority of the services listed (with the exception of soil testing) are for professional use only, and are not available directly to the homeowner."
Hmmm. I could have sworn that they discontinued the soil testing too. The one online link I followed for ordering it is coming up dead.
The local Master Gardener folks do soil testing at the local Farmer's market. That's where I got mine tested.
Thanks for the info. I am going to go on the assumption that the trees are going to be fine. My whole property is a mushroom hunter's delight this fall, so it's pretty clear why we'd have a problem caused by too much moisture.
OTOH, the good news is that as wet as it has been, our basement has stayed dry, which is one of the things you wonder about with a new house.
I have visited the UCONN site, they have a wonderful shrub database which I used to help decide what kinds of shrubs might survive in our yard.
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