If you have something untoward going on in your garden (not unlikely given all the rain and humidity), here are a couple of ways to keep track of pests and diseases that are or may soon be coming to a back yard near you: The University of Illinois Extension's Home, Yard & Garden Pest Newsletter and The Morton Arboretum's Plant Health Care Reports. The staff keeps a close eye out for trouble at the Lisle arboretum and they chronicle it all.
To identify an insect or disease problem for sure, turn to the old standbys: the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
Too often the first instinct is to ask "What do I spray?" But it's really important to figure out what the problem is first, or you may spray something that's completely ineffective.
And decide whether it's really worth bothering with. There's no need to spread more poison around the world than absolutely necessary. Remember, even "organic" pesticides are, by definition, poisons: If it's going to kill something, it's a poison.
Many plant problems are only cosmetic, and don't affect the real health of the plant. Or they are going to go away by themselves. Or they are an effect of weather, and the weather will change next week. Or by the time you notice the problem it's too late to do anything about it; many insecticides only work if they are applied at exactly the right time in the life cycle of an insect.
Often the best response, once you've determined the problem, is to live with it. Or at most, cut off the diseased foliage and get it out of the garden.
Ideally, you'd prevent it. You would use soaker hoses to water beds instead of sprinklers so the foliage wouldn't get wet to encourage fungus diseases. (Of course, that doesn't help when we've had nonstop rain. But in drier weather, it's an excellent preventative.)
If you had a plant that just was doomed to disease--such as a flowering crab apple tree that was susceptible to apple scab, as many older varieties are--you wouldn't spray it every year. You'd knock the thing down and plant a variety bred to resist the disease.
Replacement is not always practical. The hedge of ancient lilacs--varieties of Syringa vulgaris--that borders our front yard gets disfiguring powdery mildew every summer. One year long ago, I went to war and started spraying the plants with fungicide every week beginning in early spring. With all that work I succeeded in postponing the shriveling of the leaves from the last week in July to the first week in August.
That was enough fungicide for me. I decided to ignore the disfigurement and put replacing the hedge with something disease-resistant on the long list of someday projects, one of the things I felt vaguely guilty for not getting around to.
Then new neighbors moved in next door and, in preparation for some landscape work, had the yard surveyed. Turns out the lilacs are on their property. So I'm off the hook; I am entitled to entirely ignore the powdery mildew. Which will probably be bad this damp year. But hey, it's not my problem.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
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