 Hi everybody. Welcome to the North Dakota State University spring fever garden forums where we connect you the gardener with the researchers at NDSU. My name is Tom Calve. I'm an extension horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences and tonight I'm joined with Bob Birch, a web technology specialist in the Department of Aeroculture Communications. This is the third of our four forums this spring and tonight our theme is going to be trees and shrubs and just as a note all the handouts for tonight's forum are posted now on the spring fever website. The format that we use tonight will be the one we always use. We start with a 20 to 25 minute presentation followed by about 10 to 15 minutes of your questions and we do invite your participation in the forums and as Bob described if you have a question just click on that purple tab in the lower right hand corner and that will open up a chat box typing your question hit the enter key and that question will come to me and then I'll do my best to get as many questions as possible answered. Okay let's get started. Are you doing a good job taking care of your trees in your yard? Here to tell us the dos and don'ts of tree care is Joe's Lesnick and Extension Forester. Joe welcome to the forum. Okay well thank you Tom and as we get this going I want to say welcome to everybody. How many folks do we have tonight? Over 500. Over 500. Well that's great. Okay well when we first talked about this program tonight my part of it this was the title I came up with tree maintenance spring and summer which could go on for hours and I have to say I didn't really like that title a whole lot it just wasn't it was too much so I came up with this one we're going to go trees month by month this is more of the things you need to do on a regular basis throughout the course of the year. So what we're seeing right now March and April that we are in April I called it March earlier today and I was corrected as we're seeing winter injury on conifers this is a ponderosa pine tree actually in my own yard about a month ago about a month ago and you notice there's kind of orange golden tips on some of those needles as we look a little closer you can see them a little more clearly they actually tended to be on the south side of the tree I've seen other trees where they are on the south side I've seen other trees where they're all the way around golden tips like this golden branches there's a not branches excuse me needles and there's a close-up winter injury is a very broad category there's lots of different things that can cause winter injury the extreme cold the the sun the wind it can get dry it can get cold it can get warm again varying temperatures here's an Austrian pine on the end issue of campus from several years ago you know this one I think it's pretty clear there was an area that was protected by the deep snow whereas above that it wasn't protected looking a little closer we can see well a few weeks later about three or four weeks later than that first picture hey new growth is starting to occur and that's good well new growth is starting to occur on some of the branches but not others those others in the black with the black arrows those are dead those buds died they they didn't survive so I have to say that tree is no longer there it just wasn't hard enough or something killed it some type of winter injury sometimes winter injury it hits other conifers as well spruce trees junipers in the example here arbor vitae it can be along a sidewalk where who knows maybe that sidewalk where the junipers were or the arbor vitae that was cleared of snow and those were exposed maybe there was a little bit of salt that was used there it's hard to say regardless there's not a whole lot that can be done about winter injury other than sitting wait hate to say it but that's really about all we can do at this point see what happens hope for the best the other thing that I see a lot at this time of the year is damage from rabbits voles mice sometimes deer and they really love fruit trees I have to say I'm not a big fan of rabbits I have an ongoing battle against them this was outside of my old church several years ago in west fargo the church spent a lot of money on these trees and the rabbits I think these might have been jack rabbits did a number on them it was very sad to see because this basically those trees were done they were girdled all the way around when they lose the bark like that yeah prune here if you want any kind of tree to come back everything above that is going to die there might there will probably be sprouts coming out about there on this example sometimes it's prune it's girdled all the way to the ground so pruning won't do anything you could start over you could plant a new tree but so it's going to need protection in the future so if it's a grafted tree let's say you've got your your honeycrisp apple grafted onto a rootstock like dolgo crab apple which is very hardy is it going to come back as the dolgo crab apple it really depends where the graft was if the graft is in that living tissue below below that dead area then the graft the desired graft might come back okay you might get your honeycrisp back there's no guarantee but if it's whoops sorry but if it's above that point um it's not going to come back you're just going to get suckers from the root system so again nowhere the graft is and I should have put in a photo of a graft a graft union look up graft union google it that should show you what a graft will look like here's some damage on arborvite the deer love our love arborvite this was in north moorhead I think 97 uh boy those trees really took it hard are these trees going to survive maybe actually they were there a couple years later so they did survive but boy were they stressed that's a lot of needles to lose so okay after the damage from rabbits and rodents maybe you were fortunate enough to put on tree wrap or other type of protection time to take that off okay this is an apple tree in my own yard I put I put pipe on that stem I put pipe on some of the lower branches and it seems to work okay I'm probably going to need to do this every winter for the next several years because that tree is still small diameter and the rabbits really like it here's an example from newtown north dakota several years ago boy they left that tree wrap on too long it was really causing some damage to that tree I think the tree survived it recovered although the rock mulch is a little tough on the tree but this is a case where they should have taken that tree wrap off a lot earlier I think they left this on year round and at the bottom of the stem you can see that there's some mold growing so we want to try to avoid that so remove the tree wrap and any other protection you have okay and finish pruning people say isn't it too late to prune well it's a little late but you know what you can go out there and do it now and just get it done next week or two that'd be good we do have a publication basic guidelines for pruning trees and shrubs if you look that up there there's a link right there I don't think they'll be able to access the link on the powerpoint but if you looked up ndsu extension h 10 36 that would get you to the document so that was it march and april how about may you know in may it's time to plant trees that's when the soil conservation districts are going can you plant trees right now well actually yeah anytime you can dig and you're not hitting frost you can plant trees tree roots will grow anytime the soil temperatures above 40 degrees so I just want to emphasize as far as planting goes location location location just like wise investment there are good locations and bad locations this was a bad location to put an elm tree right under the power line try to avoid that if you can look overhead look around see what's nearby we don't want to cause conflicts with infrastructure in the foreground of this photo there are a couple new trees planted I'm pretty sure those are crab apples or plums something that's fairly short the other thing here's another example uh this was from south fargo from last year boy is that hard for fighting awfully close and I'm not talking the one in the foreground talking that that straight spire in the back corner of the house and the one beyond that we'll take another look here here's another angle that straight spire on the right side of the screen yeah it's against the siding it's into the roof it had to go around the roof uh the one on the side the bigger one closer in the foreground that's up against the siding too one thing we rarely do is look to see what is the mature size of the tree and that's kind of important because this can happen there are a lot of different cultivars of our of arborvite some are bigger than others juniper is the same thing some are more columnar some are more broad spreading so it's going to vary from tree to tree look look that up when you're planting trees keep that in mind it's a location location location and we do have a planting publication look up f1785 tree planting in north dakota that'll give you some uh broad tips more than just green side up that's one of our our favorite tips green side up goes beyond that a little more actually goes a lot more than that um one of the questions I get starting this time of year I got two of them today it's about needle cast disease and needle cast is a disease on spruce trees usually we see it more in the eastern part of the state and oh I didn't put the publication up for this one uh one thing about needle cast is it's it can be controlled by fungicides and the first application usually happens towards the end of May about the same time that spruce trees uh their needles are about half elongated so keep that in mind uh towards the end of May usually that's around the end of May uh roughly around uh Memorial Day in June now it's warm now we've got our trees planted what happens in June in June I start to get phone calls and emails lots of them several every day uh regarding what's wrong with my tree and there's a lot of things that can go wrong with trees there are a lot of insect pests that show up there are some uh disease pests fungal diseases and this is when they're most often observed and quite frankly I can go on for hours just on pests so I'll I'll just say observe and note what's going on and another thing I will say defoliation or other leaf damage is not a problem if there's less than about 30 loss this is very interesting to me that you know trees are a little redundant they have more tissue than they really need uh that's not if it's not a bad thing but they kind of uh are playing for loss that is they expect insects to come along they expect wind storms to happen they expect diseases and they can handle a bit of defoliation so if there's a little bit of damage on the the leaves quite frankly it's it's not not anything to worry about just keep an eye on that keep that in mind so that's June and July uh sorry staying in June all right in June uh there's a second application of fungicide that's needed to prevent needle cast and usually that's about three to four weeks later than the than that may application it depends on which product you're using so make sure you follow the label directions but this is another thing that often needs to be done in June water and fertilizer don't overdo it one of the questions we often get is how much fertilizer do my trees need what's the best fertilizer and you know what uh my my smart alec answer and i apologize for being a smart alec is the best fertilizer is water um generally our soils are fine in north dakota generally our soils have plenty of nutrients the most limiting factor of trees is water because of the tendency we have to get drives to get into drought that being said don't overwater either uh trees need water but they don't need it every day or twice a day or three times a day once a week is sometimes even too much uh what i recommend now a newer tree first month yeah maybe once a week a second month maybe once every other week after that i i tend to just cut back on watering i i like to be hard on trees i like that to make them forage on their site live on their site without a whole lot of help from me because they're going to be there a lot longer than i am okay uh summer you can actually prune in the summer uh we do recommend avoiding these different species because of insect and disease problems for elm trees we're trying to avoid creating wounds on elm trees in the summer because wounded elm trees attract bark beetles and bark beetles are what carry dutch elm disease so we're trying to avoid that if you can and sometimes you got to do what you got to do um honey locus trees there's a fun fungal problem with those oak trees uh the issue there is a problem called oak wilt which we haven't really found in north dakota yet but it can be a problem so we try to avoid mooning oak trees in the summer and then the bottom group apples hawthorns juneberries anything in the rose family these are the species that can get fire blight fire blight is actually a bacterial problem uh but we try to avoid wounding these in the summer if we can if there's storm damage obviously you do what you got to do all right so moving on to july happy fourth of july happy independence day keep your eye out on pests um my calls start to taper off at this point and i will say we recommend not fertilizing from roughly july fourth onward uh well maybe by mid september you could start again why do we recommend this because actually it's all about winter i think winter in july well uh what we're thinking here is that if trees are growing so fast into the fall they're they're fully healthy a lot of vegetative tissue a lot of tender tissue they don't harden up for winter so our recommendation is to stop fertilizing once you get into july and related to that in august cut way back on watering i again it's the same thing we don't want trees to go into winter uh well sorry we don't want the them to go into fall too vigorous and growing the way that trees respond to drought is very similar to the way uh physiologically they start to kick in for winter hardiness the two mechanisms are related so we recommend cutting way back on watering you know um we planted a tree for my mother-in-law years ago an autumn blaze maple uh for better or worse it's a good tree it's a bad tree for better or worse she wanted an autumn blaze so we planted it for her and it never would color up for her and i finally realized they had a sprinkler system in their yard they were watering constantly so that tree was growing and growing and growing late into the fall it never really hardened up like it should never really colored up either uh since then years ago my mother-in-law since left us my wife and i live in that house now and let me tell you we cut back on watering we turn off the the sprinkler system in august and now the autumn blaze does color up it's still a little late but it does color up and it hardens up for winter that's really the most important thing so oh there it is why why do i recommend this it's because of the drought drought stress response so that's august wow the year is going fast uh september please i want to start singing calendar girl no calendar tree no okay in september we start watering again around mid month start fertilizing again around mid month if that's something you want to do again our soils are usually pretty darn good and they don't need fertilizer fall planting can you plant trees in the fall yes absolutely actually can plant trees year-round well sorry you can plant trees all summer long let me rephrase that sorry um but fall is a good time to plant as well and among other things this is a rough recommendation of when you want to have your trees in the ground by timeline and this is ideal i got the ideal highlighted there in the figure title the reason first of all we have this this figure here is it's all about soil temperature we want to get the trees in the ground about a month before the soil temperature drops to 40 degrees Fahrenheit now obviously i can't predict that you can't predict nobody can predict that but there's a lot of information available from the north dakota ag weather network the end on system okay and from that data we're able to pull out what time does the soil temperature on average get to 40 degrees and it's one month after each of these dates about four weeks after each of these dates so ideally up in the northwest part of the state you'd want to have trees in by mid september um you know on the southeast you got till october first there's actually quite a broad gap there quite a span of time so this is ideal if you happen to get something in in the northwest on september 17th is the tree doomed to fail no no this is an average uh this is an estimate everything's an estimate uh so this is just a recommendation you can go beyond that absolutely um and best wishes hope it works okay so that's fall planting as we get into october uh one of the things we we've started to water again one of the things that we try to do is actually water conifers in before winter arrives and give them a good thorough soaking uh don't drown them but make sure that they're they're fully hydrated going into winter one of the causes of winter injury can be the trees are kind of dry and uh they get a nice warm day in the middle of winter and they go to do photosynthesis and they lose moisture from their leaves their needles but they can't replace it because the ground is frozen so we try to get them going into winter uh a little more hydrated is it a perfect solution no but it certainly helps certainly does help so that's what we're trying to avoid okay oh and then get to october we also want to protect the trees from rabbits and deer so that's time to you know we we got to keep this in mind we usually don't think about it in october but that's when we have to start doing this that tree that i had the pipes on earlier in its life i had a fence around it because i just didn't want the rabbits to hit it or the deer and so far so good knock on wood uh we'll see my wife bought me that tree okay that's that tree now rake up and destroy diseased leaves you know it's very interesting a lot of the foliar diseases of trees the the way that fungus will over winter is in the dead leaves that are on the ground so if we can get rid of those this is a good time to do that we can get rid of those diseased leaves then that might reduce the the problems the following year so fall cleanup this is a good thing to do and come november time to start pruning again uh it's interesting you you look at the the cities in north dakota when do they start pruning they start pruning on november 1st now maybe november 15th but they're trying to avoid again things like spreading dutch elm disease attracting elm bark beetles but winter is a great time to prune and with that i think kind of flew through that but be happy to take your questions and joe has a quick ear we welcome we welcome people's questions here's one joe uh let's best for winter protection tree wrap or that white drain tile or should he use both i don't think you need both uh either one will work well whatever fits your your budget whatever fits your situation the point is keep the uh keep the bark covered so that the rabbits or voles or mice or whatever can't get to it i've seen plastic pike do a great job except where that scene was split you know uh because that's where the rabbits could get in there because the pipe wasn't big enough i've seen similar things with that tree wrap so either will work just fine just make sure that you got good coverage can somebody compost diseased leaves yes you can uh boy good composting though you need to get the the temperature that compost up really hot uh bacteria and probably fungi will be killed at about 160 degrees fahrenheit and that's pretty hot so you need to get that up to a really high temperature okay question about uh vol damage on plums mm it was a pipe stolen toka plums were curled by voles will the trees sucker and if they do will the suckers be the same as a desired plume cultivar well the tree will likely sucker but the other question is where they grafted uh it's it's hard to say because usually trees like that are grafted however sometimes trees are on their own roots you really have to check your your own tree that apple tree of mine that i've got so well protected it's actually not grafted it's a what is it it's a frostbite apple that was uh propagated on its own root system so it's not grafted well that's a different situation you'll have to check your plum chances are it is grafted in which case it would probably and chances are it was grafted above where the damage was so um chances are the suckers will be a wild type plum or not the desired you have to see where the suckers come from below the graft or above the graft right right joe how long can evergreen stand in water uh evergreens are generally has a great question for this time here evergreens are generally not flood tolerant uh they really have a hard time with flooding however right now if they're dormant doesn't matter if they're dormant they can withstand the flooding there's still a lot of evergreens within that flood plain of the red river right now even since the 97 flood in the 2005 flood and the 2010 flood and uh and all those if the trees dormant they should be fine if they are flooded it doesn't take much you know maybe a week to at the most before they start to feel it really bad uh there's in minot where they had that flood in 2011 uh or in vismarck in 2011 as well um those areas that were flooded have hardly any conifers left they were mostly killed show uh how low would you keep the top of the fruit trees prune for the best and easiest harvesting i would defer that question to tom how low would you go tom well for the best harvesting i keep it nine feet so i can go to get on the ladder but actually i think about 12 to no more than 15 feet okay is good ballpark okay you're good uh joe how about uh somebody is a fan of that yellow paint that you use on as uh on the pruning sites those happy faces yes is that recommended joe is that tree really smiling or is or is it sad that it was done you know uh my guess is that that was latex paint i don't know for sure i don't know who who painted that i know it was 2003 or earlier and it was touched up in the last 15 years as well um no actually we don't recommend latex paint or or other pruning uh wound treatments there is a if you if you look at the research there's very little research that supports their use um if you prune at the proper time of year you make proper pruning cuts uh you're going to minimize you're going to minimize uh chances where insects and diseases will get in and rot will start in that tree that tree that example that's a cottonwood tree the south side of i-94 at um oh mile marker 222 roughly uh there's a rest area there and i've been taking photos there every year since 2003 and that uh that wound is healing over but it's all rotten behind it or starting to rot behind it so no i don't recommend that okay joe you talked about how evergreens uh struggle under flooded conditions can you give some general comments about deciduous trees including fruit trees and how they're flooding and maybe is there a publication you could recommend oh sure yeah there it's a little more variable with deciduous trees actually fruit trees uh are some of the more sensitive to flooding uh i want to say more than about four weeks of flooding and they're they're really stressed uh something like a green ash or an american linden or box elder that's uh adapted to that type of habitat you know they can they can take the flooding and be less stressed at that time uh we do have an extension publication on helping flooded trees and hopefully we can get a link to that uh publication for you of course google will have that yes just google that you can find it and we'll get uh recommendations on shade trees todd our next speaker will be great for this joe are you making a maple syrup this spring how did we get that quick wow does that have to do with anything i wish i was making maple syrup this spring this would have been a great spring the way with that melt with snow was slow where we had cold nights uh below freezing warm days above freezing i bet there was a good maple flow this year uh sugar maple trees generally don't do well in north dakota where they do okay uh box elder trees which are native and are a maple actually have nearly as much sugar as a sugar maple so if you're making maple if you're making box elder maple syrup i would imagine this was a great year for it so do you recommend people tapping their maple trees for maple syrup joe you're not going to get maple syrup any other way unless you go buy it at the store uh on the tree you feel about that you know people sometimes wonder are you hurting the tree you know you are you're creating a wound you're drilling into it the sap that's coming out of it the liquid is well it's sugar water essentially and you are taking some sugar some stored energy from the tree so there are recommendations on how big a tree to tap how many taps per tree um you know you don't want to overstress the tree but again trees are a bit redundant and they can take a little bit of damage so people have been tapping the same trees for years uh if you do it right it's not going to hurt the tree okay joe um this person in stark billings county has pine needles that show gray on the needles is this caused by high salt water that's a good question uh i would need to know more about the situation specifically is it just showed up this time of year or is it their year round one thing i have seen with salt salty water that's used in irrigation is um you know if the oh maybe the needles turned a little brown the tips will turn the tips will burn and that burn will be worse on older needles you know there's a uh this year's growth last year's growth two years ago growth and those older needles will have a lot more of the needle tips burned than the newer needles if it's salt damage i saw that on ponderosa pine some people i guess could be gray i've seen it more as brown but i think uh sometimes color is uh more of the the eye of the beholder right so anybody can take a photo of that a digital photo of that incident to joe and he can give you his expert analysis um joe how recent is the latest nbsu spruce needle cast publication and is there a new one coming wow who asked that question i don't know someone just wants to give you a hard time i think i know who asked that question uh well jim good guess uh the publication is a few years old we're still working on getting the new the updated version of that out it's about five years old um we hope to get that new one out within the next month or two great uh joe there's a lot of worry about needle cast being uh displayed here uh can it be stopped and the tree recover oh boy that's it's hard it's hard to say yes um it can be controlled uh the tree it can be controlled to the point where the tree will be healthy there are two different types of needle cast there's one called rhizospora and there's one called stigmina and it seems like stigmina is actually the more common one now and it's actually the tougher one tougher to control uh it it's yeah it takes a lot more uh it takes a lot more fungicide applications to keep it under control not only more in any given year but more years in a row and it can keep the uh it seems like those fungicide applications can keep the disease under control but it's nearly impossible to totally eradicate it okay joe um what sort of fungicide would be good to paint on an apple tree after pruning i personally don't recommend any but i don't know maybe you do tom you know i i agree with your earlier statement that there's no need for wound dressings and no orchard would use a wound dressing on a pruning wound um okay we're gonna just we're gonna shut this down just a couple minutes how to prevent brown spots on apple leaves sounds like scab disease sounds like apple scab potentially um black rot or a frog eye leaf spot this is that's an encounter there's oh boy um there is a series of fungicide applications that could be applied early in the growing season and it's pretty intense and i think there's a total of four of them again i'll defer to you you're the the apple okay wow this is what joe mentioned first for scab disease makes a big difference as far as raking underneath the tree because most scab disease comes from beneath the tree beneath the tree canopy so you can make a huge difference just by raking or nothing else mowing underneath the tree um to get to for sanitation purposes and then like joe indicated uh sprays if you want to you can use a series of sprays the key time to start spraying is as soon as you see bud break and let's say a spray every uh seven to ten days you want to spray before rain so that the fungicide provides a shield of protection against the infection um cap tan mangle zeb or sulfur is often used i just think three spray and also don't forget about pruning like joe mentioned pruning makes a huge difference as far as getting more air flow and sunlight in the canopy that makes a huge difference as far as minimizing foliar diseases um okay i think we're gonna shut it down right there i see uh some questions that maybe todd our next speaker can address and we'll do it then so let's take a five minute break and we're gonna move on to learn about some recommended trees thank you joe thank you