Pests & Diseases

Spring is just around the corner and many types of fruit trees are starting to develop their leaves. If you are growing peaches or nectarines and are now seeing symptoms of peach leaf curl on new leaves, unfortunately it's too late to manage the disease.

Springtime planting is almost here but don't rush to plant seeds until the soil has warmed up! Planting seeds too soon, when the soil is cold and wet, risks losing them to damping-off, a disease caused by fungi and oomycetes in the soil.

Learn how to prevent and treat peach leaf curl with expert advice from the Master Gardeners of Alameda County. Keep your peach trees healthy and productive!

Healthy Soils Week (Dec. 4-8) is a week-long initiative by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to highlight the importance of soil health throughout California. Healthy soils can improve crop yields, sequester carbon, reduce erosion, and increase biodiversity.

Peach leaf curl is a fungal disease that only affects peach and nectarine trees. The fungus causes distorted, reddened leaves to appear on the tree in the spring.

Sudden oak death (SOD) is a disease syndrome that has killed millions of native oak trees (Figure 1) along the west coast of the United States, from Big Sur in California up to Southern Oregon.

Have you been seeing a lot of defoliated sycamore trees recently? Sparse foliage and early leaf drop on sycamore trees might be due to anthracnose. The cool, wet spring in many parts of California provided the perfect conditions for this disease.

An immense amount of rain has fallen across California in recent weeks. While rain is incredibly beneficial, in excess it can cause serious problems. The continued wet conditions opens the door for many pests, so see the list of dos and don'ts below for common wet weather pest prevention tips.

Abiotic plant disorders are generally caused by environmental conditions, rather than microorganisms. They are sometimes called noninfectious diseases. Abiotic disorders can develop if a plant's needs are not being met.

With ongoing drought and local water restrictions in place in many areas of California, you may start to see landscape plants suffering from stress caused by a lack of water, calledwater stress. Water-stressed plants can have symptoms that resemble diseases caused by plant pathogens.