THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510200093
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: GARDENING
SOURCE: ROBERT STIFFLER
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
I have a 10-year-old Bradford pear in my backyard and three 7-year-old ones in my front yard. The trees in my front yard are doing beautifully, but after seven years of doing well, this is the third summer the tree in my back yard has been sick. Its leaves are a paler shade of green than before. Also the tree has fewer leaves.
I don't know if there is any connection, but about the time my Bradford pear got sick, I had some ``red tip'' shrubs in my back yard that also got sick. Their leaves got pale and had dark spots on them, so I removed them from my yard. Can you offer any suggestions as to what is wrong and what might be done about it?
Mike Host, Chesapeake
Here are three possibilities for what may have caused your tree problem:
Poor drainage will cause rotting of roots, and then the tree reacts as you describe. Do the trees in front have better drainage? Drainage would have to be pretty bad to get your tree to look the way it does, because Bradford pears are tolerant of wet feet.
If you planted your tree from a container, encircling roots that developed in the container may be choking your tree. Uncover roots around the trunk and out one foot to see if they are circling the tree, choking other roots. If so, you need to clip them with sharp shears and that could solve the problem.
Using weed and feed or spraying a weed-killing herbicide around the tree could cause problems.
You were smart to remove the red-tip photinia, because it is a problem shrub, but that should have no bearing on your tree problem.
Is there anything in the soil that causes tomato blight?
Emily Kenney, Chesapeake
Virginia Tech experts confirm that tomato blights are some of a home gardener's worst nightmares. And blight is difficult to control. If you walk through infected plants and then touch others, it can infect them all. Never smoke among tomatoes, because that affects them. Blights can be spread in the soil, but that does not normally happen unless the soil is heavily infected.
Blight is caused by a fungus, the same as with potato blight. Prevention is the best cure, using an organic or chemical spray such as the baking soda in water formula or Daconil.
I removed a sweet gum tree and hired a man to bring over a stump grinder. Despite this, I have had hundreds of sweet gum sprouts throughout the yard. Last year I sprayed Roundup on each sprout, but the tree continued to send up new tree sprouts along its roots. My strategy at the moment is to mow them down. There is now a forsythia growing where the stump was, so I need to use some care as to what I apply. Another deciduous tree that I had cut down is doing the same thing. Its stump was not ground out. Can you suggest something?
Phyllis Cowley, Virginia Beach
Yours is not an easy problem. Even though you ground out the stump, the roots remain alive. I'm fighting the same problem with locust trees, which are even worse. Hampton Roads Research Center specialists say to spray the sprouts regularly with Weed-B-Gon or 33 Plus, which will eventually kill the sprouts and roots. Those products will not harm the grass. You can use Roundup concentrate at the 6-ounces-per-gallon rate or Kleenup, but those will kill any surrounding vegetation. Be patient. It will take up to a year to get rid of all the sprouts and roots.
I live in the Larchmont area and have a small area to raise tomatoes but have had to use the same area over and over. The tomatoes did very well for several years but now each year, my tomatoes, as well as my neighbor's, do not ripen properly. Anywhere from a small part to almost the entire tomato fails to get red. It runs yellow in sections and does not form properly. It also gets pretty hard. One expert told me it might be a virus. Do you have any ideas concerning this?
Dorothy A. Bruno, Norfolk
Yours is a good question. Many of mine ripened the way you describe this year. First, don't smoke around the plants, say Virginia Tech experts. A virus causes the infection which results in improper ripening. Plant your tomatoes in a different area each year, and you may want to start spraying early with a fungicide. Be sure to destroy the old vines this year.
I am writing in reference to a letter from Arline Schultze about the loss of her Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana) tree due to storm damage. The Bradford pear is very susceptible to breakage, due to multiple stems and weak branch crotches. However, there is an arboriculturally-sound method for reducing the loss of large branch sections. Cabling and bracing, in conjunction with thinning the tree, seem to help. A certified arborist can examine any Bradford pear tree to determine if this method can help.
Tim Nuckols, Nuckols Tree Care, Virginia Beach, phone 499-1143
A good suggestion from Tim Nuckols. If I owned a Bradford pear, I'd call a certified arborist to have it thinned and braced. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Newer, slimmer varieties of Bradford pear, such as Aristocrat, are
less susceptible to storm damage.
by CNB