disease

If you garden, you're going to deal with insects, disease, weeds and pests. There's so much information available on-line it can be hard to know where to start. Some of the best starting points include:

• University of California pest notes pests in homes, gardens, landscapes, and turf
• Animal Pests: from birds to voles, we've got information and advice for many of the most common troublesome critters
• Weed Management in Landscapes (and a photo gallery of some of the most common weeds)
• Orchard Pests and Diseases -a discussion of integrated pest management from The California Backyard Orchard

There's more too, just look for the links to the left.

By: Allen Buchinski – October, 2003

It’s the rare gardener who hasn’t had to deal with powdery mildew (PM). With many different species, each one “tailored” to attack different kinds of plants, it’s one of the most common garden ailments. How common you might ask? Well, a little research on the internet yields the following (although most of us don’t need statistics to believe it!):

• A search for “powdery mildew” on the UC IPM site returns 151 results including 18 pest notes dedicated to PM on specific plants (including vegetables, grapes, ornamentals, fruits and berries, apples, turf grass, lettuce, cucurbits, and tomato. And that’s only half the list!) Plus there’s additional PM info in their on-line tomato and grape disease databases.
• The same search on Google returns 89,000 results including bulletins many university cooperative extension, articles in gardening related sites, discussion forums, and even one with a URL of www.powdery-mildew.com.

Of course, all that proves is it’s common, and we already knew that. So let’s dig a little deeper to learn more about what it is and what we can do about it.

Tuliptree

Scale and aphids have been raising havoc on tuliptrees (Yellow Poplar) throughout Willow Glen in San Jose and beyond for a number of years. The visual cue is the dripping sticky honeydew all over sidewalks and minor to major limb dieback on affected trees. Entomologists from the University of California are conducting research to introduce a beneficial insect a parasitic wasp called Metaphycus flavus to help control the scale. It may have some potential but the results are not yet conclusive. In the meantime, it may be necessary to join together with neighbors and jointly hire a spray company to control the pest where trees are severely affected trees and their survival is threatened. Spraying should be avoided in the wasp release areas.

Sycamore

The sycamores planted as street trees and in home landscapes up until 15 or 20 years ago were almost always seedling Platanus acerifolia (the London Plane tree) rather than one of the two common selected cultivars 'Yarwood' or 'Bloodgood' that have been widely planted since that time. These earlier sycamores get three highly visible and troublesome pests -- Anthracnose, powdery mildew and sycamore scale. The practical solution in most situations is to live with the problem or replant with the most insect and disease resistant cultivar 'Yarwood'.