Winter slows down many garden pest problems, but it's also a key time for gardeners to take actions to prevent certain pest problems that occur in the spring. One of the most important of these preventive practices is application of dormant treatments for peach leaf curl.
Caused by the fungus Taphrina deformans, peach leaf curl is a very serious disease, which affects only peach and nectarine trees. Its most distinctive symptom is distortion, thickening, and reddening of foliage as trees leaf out in the spring. Damaged leaves often die and fall off trees but will be replaced with new, usually healthy leaves once the weather turns dry and warmer. A leaf curl infection that continues untreated over several years will...
[From the December 2016 issue of the UC IPM Green Bulletin]
A new plant pathogen in the genus Phytophthora (pronounced Fie-TOF-ther-uh) has recently been found in several California native plant nurseries and habitat restoration sites. The pathogen, Phytophthora tentaculata, poses a risk of disease in wildlands, gardens and landscapes that use susceptible California native and non-native plants. Once introduced in these areas, the pathogen can generate disease for years to come, potentially causing lasting environmental and economic...
/span>- Author: Anne Schellman
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
Now is the time to prepare your garden and landscape for winter. The simple tasks recommended below will help prevent perennial weeds, insect pests, and certain disease pathogens so these problems don't get established and become difficult later.
Weeds
- Manage weeds using nonchemical methods such as cultivation, handweeding, or mowing.
- Prevent weeds using competitive plants, mulches, and hand removal.
- Herbicides (weed killers) are rarely needed in established landscape plantings when nonchemical controls are used regularly.
To learn more about managing weeds, see the UC IPM Pest Note: Weed...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Newly appointed UC Cooperative Extension agricultural engineering advisor Alireza Pourreza has been awarded the 2016 Giuseppe Pellizzi Prize by the Club of Bologna, an honor presented every other year to the best doctoral dissertations focused on agricultural machinery and mechanization. The Club of Bologna is a world taskforce on strategies for the development of agricultural mechanization.
Pourreza, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 2014, worked on early detection of huanglongbing disease of citrus. Huanglongbing, an incurable disease that is spread by Asian citrus psyllid, has seriously impacted citrus...
August 11, 2016
Two more trees have been confirmed positive for Huanglongbing (HLB), the plant disease carried by an invasive insect called the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP).
One tree is located in San Gabriel and the other is in Hacienda Heights, in very close proximity to the original HLB find from 2012. As always, the California Department of Food and Agriculture worked quickly to contact the homeowners and remove the infected trees. The tree in San Gabriel has already been removed, and the tree in Hacienda Heights is scheduled to be removed today.
The Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program outreach team has been active with HLB education in Los Angeles for many months....