Landscape trees provide welcome shade, fruit, homes for wildlife, and even a place for kids to climb. But if the wood is damaged, disease-causing fungi can infect the tree. A number of fungal diseases decay wood in both tree branches and trunks, weakening and sometimes killing the tree. Wood decay can be hazardous when infected branches and trunks fall.
Many gardeners and landscapers enjoy growing and caring for roses. Through careful selection of varieties and appropriate cultivation, roses can be grown with a minimum of pest problems. Establishing rose plants to grow in environments with adequate conditions will allow them to grow well, while reducing their susceptibility to pests.
Find more information on growing healthy roses in UC IPM's newly updated Pest Notes: Roses in the Garden and Landscape: Cultural Practices and Weed Control, authored by John Karlik, Environmental Horticulture Advisor with UC Cooperative Extension, Kern County.
What's new in this version? You'll find examples...
Palm trees are commonly seen in California, making some think about the tree-lined streets of Hollywood, or sitting by the pool somewhere. These tropical or subtropical trees are beautiful and varied, with many different types of palms, each adapted for different growing conditions and each with specific disease-causing pathogens that can attack it.
Palm trees, like other plants, are susceptible to pathogens that can weaken or even kill the tree. Diseases such as diamond scale, pink rot, Fusarium wilt, and others can reduce the leaf canopy, discolor leaves and trunk, and cause distortion, stunting or death.
If you have palm trees or care for palms as part of your work, it's important to identify and know about these...
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
It's not often that we get to mix baseball and pests in our blog, but today we learned that the San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds game was delayed by almost 20 minutes due to swarming bees.
You can read different takes on this story from the Washington Post, NBC News, and on the Major League Baseball website, and see as one Reds player pretended to spray a pesticide to kill the bees.
In a practical...
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
In honor of May the 4th, the Star Wars fans here at the UC IPM Program thought we'd have some fun with that well-loved line from Episode VI.
Instead of strategies to conduct intergalactic battles, the traps we like to talk about are the ones for monitoring and catching pests around the home, garden, and landscape.
Test your knowledge of traps by seeing if you can name the traps below and what they are used for. Answers will be posted tomorrow!
