Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, board of college educator with University of Illinois Extension, going to you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Have you had problems this year with your plants? Oh, I bet some of us have. I know I have.
Chris Enroth: 00:21We're gonna talk about some of probably maybe like the top four problems, maybe five if we if we have enough time here to chat about some of the most common issues that we've been seeing this year for the 2024 growing season. And you know I am not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:45Hello, Chris. I've had lots of problems in the garden. Most of them have been self inflicted.
Chris Enroth: 00:50It's all your fault. That's right. I tell
Ken Johnson: 00:54you. And
Chris Enroth: 00:55Weeding, watering, overplanting, expectations, time.
Ken Johnson: 01:04That sums it up.
Chris Enroth: 01:05Yeah. That's that sums up a lot of problems. We could eliminate a lot of problems if we just had more realistic expectations of what we would accomplish in one growing season. It's already July July. It it's crazy.
Ken Johnson: 01:21Yeah. I think that about wraps up the podcast for this week.
Chris Enroth: 01:24And there you go. And thank you everyone for listening. You've been doing great. Looking good. Oh, man.
Chris Enroth: 01:33But, hey, let's celebrate a win. You text me a picture the other day of a purple beauty, a purple tomato, purple through and through, skin, flesh, all of it. So this is the it's the genetically altered or bioengineered. I think that's the term we should be using. The bioengineered tomato where they crossed that like a cherry tomato with a snapdragon gene that produces purple fruit through anthocyanin development, which is that that purple pigment in in fruit.
Chris Enroth: 02:13And you got a purple tomato. So I need to know, Ken, one, how does it taste?
Ken Johnson: 02:20It was good. It tastes like a tomato. It's not quite as not as quite as strong as a tomato flavor, a little less acidic, but maybe a little sweeter. But, yeah, it tastes like a tomato. I don't have any extra limbs or anything growing on me, at least as of yet.
Ken Johnson: 02:36So
Chris Enroth: 02:36Well, listeners, I haven't said anything to him, but he's starting to turn purple as we speak. No. He's still he's still our redheaded Viking friend here. So no. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 02:48So it tastes less acidic, less tomatoey, but still tomato.
Ken Johnson: 02:56Still a tomato. At least the the one that we ate in. And with that, you know, they're coming on green. It's like, wait a second. I thought these were supposed to be purple, and I kept waiting and waiting and waiting.
Ken Johnson: 03:05And I hadn't checked them for a while, and I checked the other night. And, oh, look. There's purple tomatoes there.
Chris Enroth: 03:12Oh, man. I I have two purple tomato plants, and they have been green for weeks. It's just a matter of time.
Ken Johnson: 03:19So you got the the stem with with multiple tomatoes on there because they're cherry tomato size. And some of them are fully purple, others are still green on that same stem. So it looks like they just have to hit that like a regular tomato. Hit that Mhmm. That full size, then they'll start coloring up.
Ken Johnson: 03:38Interesting.
Chris Enroth: 03:38Well, I I'm excited to try it. Excited to to see how it took how it goes, and, and I guess these do come true from seed the following year, so you can potentially save seed. Now when when we bought these, we had to like, there's a little checkbox agreement thing that we had to say, like, we're not gonna sell these tomatoes commercially. We're not gonna we're not gonna do anything to make money off of these tomatoes. This is just something to grow in a backyard home garden.
Chris Enroth: 04:09So that but but I guess we could potentially maybe save seed. I just wonder how the germination rate will go if we do for next year because it was awful this year. Out of 20 seeds, I got I got lucky, I think. I got seven to germinate out of 20 seeds, and I was able to share some of those with some other people. But that's Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 04:31Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 04:31It weren't it for you. I would could have you know, 20 seeds or whatever. I had one come up, and I had no cotyledons or anything. It was just the stem, and so I guess 0%. Well, I guess it did germinate, but it didn't.
Ken Johnson: 04:45So
Chris Enroth: 04:47Unsuccessful. I had one without cotyledons as well, and it was just it developed this big ball on the tip of the stem probably where all that growth hormone and energy is getting pushed to. It was like, there's nothing there. There's no leaf buds. There's nothing to grow.
Chris Enroth: 05:02So, yep, germination rate, not that great.
Ken Johnson: 05:07Yes. And for for years, have you been pruning off suckers, or have you just been letting it go wild?
Chris Enroth: 05:12Just letting it go nuts.
Ken Johnson: 05:15So that's probably why mine have have matured quicker because I've pruned off all the suckers. So they're probably pumping everything into those fruit instead of now longer, and you'll probably get more tomatoes than I will. But
Chris Enroth: 05:30Well, sounds like I need to at least go to one of my purple tomato plants and a little experiment. I'm gonna take the scissors to it tonight. You've convinced me. Because they're they're, yeah. Those suckers really make the tomato plants pretty unruly, especially in my yard where space is at a premium and everybody's fighting for a little bit of sun.
Ken Johnson: 05:52Yeah. Mine's basically a single stock. They've got tied up to a a post.
Chris Enroth: 05:57Mhmm. Yeah. I I really so I've adopted Ken's staking post technique where, essentially, you take, like, a two by four. Right, Ken? You just rip it in half.
Chris Enroth: 06:08I went I cut, like, a little, I don't know, spear tip in it with the with the miter saw also, and you get, like, an eight foot pretty sturdy stake for your tomatoes. So I did that this year too. I I love that technique. You know? I'm not growing 50 tomatoes.
Chris Enroth: 06:27I'm growing maybe a dozen at the most. So it works I think in that scale, it works pretty well.
Ken Johnson: 06:35Yeah. We've had some on the ground now for two, three years now. No. We had a couple that really started warping that we've taken out. They're almost like a sea by the time they got done.
Ken Johnson: 06:46But bottom of stayed relatively straight, and we did have I can't remember if we got 10 foot boards or 12 foot. Well, we didn't need a step ladder to pound them into the ground. Yep. Because I could not reach even on my tiptoes Mhmm. With the to get the sledgehammer on top.
Chris Enroth: 07:03Yep. Same here. Had to get the ladder and the hammer out and get those pounded in the ground. And, it lasts a long time. These aren't treated with anything.
Chris Enroth: 07:12This is just cheap old pine board. You know? Nothing nothing special. So, yeah, if I get two seasons out of it, I'd be thrilled.
Ken Johnson: 07:20I think we did use pressure treated, so it shouldn't last several years, hopefully.
Chris Enroth: 07:26Yeah. Okay. Well well, maybe we'll do a tomato trellising episode. Well, the season will be over before we know it, but eventually
Ken Johnson: 07:36For next year. Talk.
Chris Enroth: 07:38So many topics that we can think of. Speaking of topics at hand, we're gonna chat about some of the issues that we have been seeing, namely the summer, things that folks maybe email or call the extension office that they're seeing, and these would be multiple phone calls that we've been getting, multiple conversations that we've been having with people. So it's not like an isolated incident necessarily. This is occurring throughout Illinois throughout this growing season. So, Ken, I we this started this conversation started with the first thing here last year when you came to visit me here in Macomb.
Chris Enroth: 08:18And in Macomb at our extension office, we have a sea of purple coneflowers. And every once in a while, they get this thing, which I had always told our master gardeners, oh, that's Aster yellows. But Ken came and he said, no. It's not. You need to do a little bit more investigation.
Chris Enroth: 08:38So, Ken, can you tell me about what you found at our extension office? And what I am now seeing more and more of in coneflowers now that I know to look for it?
Ken Johnson: 08:50Yeah. I think so this is coneflower rosette mite, and then the symptoms look somewhat similar to Asterillos. I don't think everything kinda gets something as Asterillos, but there there is there are some differences. So with with coneflower rosette mite, we can pop a picture up here of what it looks like. You kinda get these these tufts, these spikes kinda galls on the cone part of the cone flower.
Ken Johnson: 09:13Kinda like basically this proliferation of shoots that makes it look all tufty in there. And this is caused by an area of fiat mite that gets in there, starts feeding on it, and it causes these these tissues to grow and get them all tufted and stuff. These are pretty awesome. We actually put these under the scope, and you could put a picture up here of the actual mites, and these are taken with the cell phone through an eyepiece on a on a microscope. It's not the best pictures, though, but you can see them.
Ken Johnson: 09:42They're they're kinda carrot, almost cigar shaped, and this is not something you can really you can't easily see the mites with the naked eye. You need a hand lens. I have seen pictures online of sometimes I'm getting so many mites on there. You kinda get this white powdery stuff on the tips of that stuff. Those are actually the mites.
Ken Johnson: 10:00There's so many of them on there, but I have not seen that populations that high personally. And, basically, when they get that high, they're they're on the tufts, and they just kinda hang out there until something comes by, visits that flower, and they'll grab onto it. And then that insect, bird, whatever they grab onto will move it to other flowers. That's kinda one way they can spread. They're also really small, so I'm sure wind blows them and stuff too.
Ken Johnson: 10:25It makes the flowers personal preference maybe unsightly. You could also think of it as a good conversation starter. Mhmm. Depending on who you're talking to, they may or may not enjoy that. So it could be a good way to end conversations too if you
Chris Enroth: 10:40so
Ken Johnson: 10:40with that, you know, if you if you've got that, you could you could prune those flowers off, get take them get them out of the garden, dispose of them so they don't they're not spreading. But it's not gonna cause long term health issues to those plants. Aster yellows on the other hand, and we can throw in pictures of some of the symptoms here. You get the flower petals turning green. Sometimes you'll get, like, shoots coming off the flowers of smaller flowers and stuff too.
Ken Johnson: 11:09Oftentimes, the plants are gonna be dwarfed. They'll start yellowing. So there's there's a few more symptoms going on with that. And this way is is kind of a fatal disease. So if you see that, that's for yellow in your landscape.
Ken Johnson: 11:20You wanna pull those out. Those are spread by plant hoppers, so they'll feed on that. They'll spread this bacteria from plant to plant. So if you leave them in your garden, that does have the potential to spreading to other things, and that will severely damage kill plants, if you leave it long enough. I've I pulled out two or three coneflowers this spring that had it.
Ken Johnson: 11:44Now I did leave a plant in there in my garden a year or two ago, so I get lots of pictures. So I probably have more of it than I than I should have if I would have pulled that plant when I should have. So but those those you see with some regularity. And I've been hearing a lot more people talking about Astro Yellows in their plants than I have the last couple years. Seems to be, at least from what I'm hearing, anecdotally, a little bit of an uptick maybe.
Chris Enroth: 12:12Yeah. I agree. I but, fortunately, Ken, we we I I met you, and you taught me that when it comes to trying to compare Aster yellows to the coneflower rosette mite, you gotta look at the flower first and look very closely at that. But then the mite just affects the flower of the coneflower. Aster yellows affects the entire plant.
Chris Enroth: 12:39Very often with Aster yellows, you might you might get a malformed flower head, but it's usually not not not always, but usually, it's green. It remains green. So still has a lot of that green chlorophyll stuff in it. And so, yeah, just you taught me, Kent, look more closely and then also look more broadly at the entire plant, so when you're assessing these two disease issues.
Ken Johnson: 13:04Yeah. And Astroyalis looks cool. So take a few pictures, but then pull those plants because it'll affect other plants too. It's not just conovirus. A lot of plants in the aster family, most of name, can get it as well.
Ken Johnson: 13:16So this is it's not something you necessarily wanna leave around. Otherwise, you could you could have lots of issues in your landscape potentially if you do leave that.
Chris Enroth: 13:26It's a lot of plants in the Aster family. Rogue it out.
Ken Johnson: 13:32And then don't just let it sit out. I I would probably bag that up. So if there are any plant hoppers on the plant, you're bagging them or they're not sitting there for a day or two where they could potentially feed on it as well. Yeah. And I think our our next one, which I haven't seen, but I've we've gotten some questions about about it.
Ken Johnson: 13:58I don't know if people have it or not. They're just hearing about it. It's oak wilt. This has been one we've been hear heard about and then been warning about for for several years now.
Chris Enroth: 14:10But I'm very fortunate that I have a a network of arborists all around me that know what to look for when it comes to oak wilt. And and, unfortunately, it seems to be pretty common in sort of McDonough County where I'm located. I've seen it also in Adams County and kind of throughout the western part of the state, but I can really only comment sort of locally where I am in terms of how frequent it occurs. Now oak wilt, a lot of people will call, and they'll say something's wrong with my oak tree. I think it has oak wilt.
Chris Enroth: 14:47And, yeah, Ken, you're right. Lot of people talk about it. In many cases, it's not oak wilt. It's usually some other often, it's an environmental issue, or maybe some other insect or pest or disease. But oak wilt, even though I just said it is com it it is occurring here, I wouldn't say it is a common thing that is happening all over the place, but it is definitely in my neck of the woods.
Chris Enroth: 15:15And we see it mostly affecting, we we break oaks in sort of two groups. This is kind of confusing, but one group is the red oak group, and the other group is the white oak group. Kind of the way to distinguish these two different types of oaks, and I know, yes, there is a species called red oak, and there's a species called white oak. I apologize. I didn't make up these names.
Chris Enroth: 15:40I'm just I'm I'm just telling you how they did it. But the red oak group, so a grouping of species, they often have points on their, on their lobes or on their, on the tips of their leaves. So oak leaves are lobed, and so the lobes is what sticks out. The sinus is what goes in when we talk about leaf shape or leaf morphology. So the little hairs on the tips of those lobes, that is what you see on a red oak, species in the red oak group.
Chris Enroth: 16:15In the white oak group, we have our lobes are rounded. There are no little pointed hairs or anything on on the tips of those lobes. They're just rounded lobes, rounded sinuses, and that is a key a easy way to distinguish between the two types of oaks. When it comes to oak wilt, it can infect both groupings, but it is more aggressive with the red oak group. It's so aggressive, we have seen cases where particular red oaks, like a northern red oak, scarlet oaks, pin oaks, they will die in a matter of months, which is very uncommon when it comes to trees dying.
Chris Enroth: 17:00It takes oftentimes, takes trees months, if not years, for them to succumb to a disease or an insect or something. When it comes to oak wilt in the red oak group, it can take months, if not weeks. It can happen very quickly. Contrast that with the white oak group, yes, they can get infected with the oak wilt with the oak wilt fungus, but they can resist that infection. They can still be killed by it, but a healthy, tree in the white oak group can can usually resist for several years and in some cases grow out of it.
Chris Enroth: 17:39They'll wall it off and grow out of it. So so white oaks, we're not as concerned about, but it can happen there. Red oaks, we are worried about that. And as somebody who has two very large pin oaks in my yard, I am very cautious about what happens to those trees.
Ken Johnson: 18:02Yeah. And then, like, the so the sis symptoms for that is is kinda on the leaves. You get the they're usually browning from the tips coming down in to the plant. You'll have some green tissue in the middle, which looks similar to bacterial leaf scorch.
Chris Enroth: 18:16Yes.
Ken Johnson: 18:16So those can get confusing. So this is one of those things, you know, if if you suspect it, I would send a sample off to the plant clinic to confirm what you have because with oak wilt, you're taking very drastic measures. You're cutting trees down. Then you'll start getting canopy thinning, and and then on trees that are infected, I don't know if not sure how quickly these fungal they'll form fungal mats under the bark. We gotta get these black mats with the with the fungus, and they're producing spores.
Ken Johnson: 18:44And that's what the the sap beetles will feed on, which is one of the ways this is spread. So they'll come they'll feed on that, and they'll go to disperse, and this can be long distances, mile plus. And they'll feed on other trees. It happens to be an oak tree. Maybe you got so I pruned it.
Ken Johnson: 19:01It's wounded. It's producing sap. They'll feed on that, transfer that fungus into that. Now I'm gonna spread. So that's one reason why main reason why we talk about oak trees, pruning oak trees, you don't wanna prune them.
Ken Johnson: 19:13I think it's not one recommendation, you know, in the spring and into July. I would say don't I would say most people go with do not prune it during the growing season to prevent that. Now we've had a lot of storms. You've had a storm damage or branch. You need to clean that up.
Ken Johnson: 19:29I think this is day one time where you'd wanna put on some kind of wound treatment paint latex paint something onto that that prune branch. So the sap beetles can't get to it. It'll slow down the healing process or the the the sealing process of that tree, but those sap beetles won't be able to get onto that cut surface and potentially spread oak wilt. Mhmm.
Chris Enroth: 19:53Yeah. Let's so let's talk about submitting a sample if you wanted to test your oak for something like this. As Ken described, we want to avoid pruning oaks pretty much during the growing season. However, in order to get a viable sample where our lab can actually culture out this disease, we need to have living tissue. We need to have a plant part or a branch that is infected but not dead.
Chris Enroth: 20:23And you heard how quickly this can potentially spread, especially through any red oak, type oak tree. So you're having to prune something during the growing season in order to get a sample. So according to our University of Illinois Plant Clinic, they really still advise not doing any pruning cuts from spring up until, like, the June into mid July. So right now, we're at the July. If you suspect you have oak wilt in your tree, now is the time when you could prune off an affected branch which has wilted but living leaves and some and you want it to be at least that branch to be at least, like, the width of your thumb, maybe a little bit wider than that, and submit that to the plant clinic, and it has to be shipped in a cold container.
Chris Enroth: 21:20That's this which is it's crazy, Ken. You know, the oak wilt is such a a devastating disease. It can be spread far and wide, but the thing can't survive for a couple hours severed from a tree. You know? It's it's crazy how sensitive it is to to dying when it's not, like, on on a beetle or or, you know you know, inside the tissue of a tree.
Ken Johnson: 21:46Yeah. I would say if you're if you're gonna submit a sample, I I would even think about calling the plant clinic first.
Chris Enroth: 21:50Yes.
Ken Johnson: 21:51And they can they can take you through the process, and we can include a link in the notes to the the plant clinic website where they've got instructions and and ways to contact them and how much it's gonna cost and Mhmm. And all of that fun stuff. And so that's so the beetles is one way you can try. I think the primary way, I think, is what 90% of the transmission is through root grafting. So when oak trees are growing together, when the roots come into contact with each other, they'll graft together.
Ken Johnson: 22:19So you kinda almost have this just giant root system shared by multiple trees. So if one tree gets that oak wilt, it's gonna go down on the root system and work its way through all those other trees that are attached to it. So, you know, when it when it comes to management, if you do have it, you're you're cutting trees down, destroying that wood so those fungal mats don't develop. And if you've got multiple oak trees, you're also severing root grafts. So going through the giant saw or trencher, basically, and cutting into the soil and severing those root grafts to try to prevent that spread.
Chris Enroth: 22:55Mhmm. And the trees, as as they die, the oak trees, they are they are they sacrifice those that last bit of energy, you know, that maybe they could have pushed into new growth. They take that that those energy, that sugars, carbohydrates, all that, and they push it into those root grafts to their surrounding trees. A lot of times, if it's their progeny, like, you know, their seedlings, that there's, like, a priority there of shifting that energy into those that's their offspring, their genetics. So that just hastens that the spread of oak wilt.
Chris Enroth: 23:34It just speeds it up and and pushes it outward. And that's what a lot of my conversations have been with with arborists and homeowners this past year. Like, alright. So you we we have a red oak, you know, specifically in this one situation was a northern red oak surrounded by other northern red oaks, and then, you know, it it's right behind. There's woods right behind there, full of oak trees, lots of other high value oak trees in this residential area.
Chris Enroth: 24:03And so talking about timing of cutting down the tree and trenching and doing all of those processes, and not only just one trench to to cut off the infected oak, red oak, kind of the, you know, ground zero, patient zero right there, concentric rings of trenching to then separate other, oaks from each other because we kinda have to assume a little bit that those right adjacent to that first one that's infected, those potentially could already be infected as well. So if you have high value trees, you can do a lot of destructive trenching to tree roots in an effort to save those trees. It probably it is expensive. It's a lot of work. Oak trees, you know, they'll respond also with canopy loss when they lose massive amounts of fruits.
Chris Enroth: 24:59And so it's it's a stress onto the tree itself, but we're trying to prevent that tree from dying from oak wilt.
Ken Johnson: 25:07Yeah. There I think there is one fungicide you can use. I think it's an injection. Mhmm. But it's it's a preventative.
Ken Johnson: 25:14It's not a curative. So once your tree's got it, you're done. But you could again, it it's I don't think it's necessarily all that commonly done because it's not necessarily cheap. So this again, you're gonna be getting into your high value specimen trees, things like that. Was it propiconazole?
Chris Enroth: 25:29It is.
Ken Johnson: 25:29What you could potentially treat trees with to try to prevent them from becoming infected. Again, if they've got it, just cut it down. There's Yeah. There's nothing you can do, especially with red oaks, to save them.
Chris Enroth: 25:45And the problem with systemic fungicides is that the risk to resistance is higher because that active ingredient is ever present in that tissue, getting exposed to whatever fungi or disease is trying to make its way into that tree. And, eventually, after being exposed over and over and over again, one of those fungal cells develops resistance because that rapiconazole or whatever the act whatever that systemic active ingredient has been in there for years, and, eventually, something breaks through. That's just that's just how it works, whether you're talking fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, and any of that stuff. Resistance develops, the more exposure you have to that chemical.
Ken Johnson: 26:34Yeah. Lots of doom and gloom.
Chris Enroth: 26:37Man, I feel really depressed right now. We need to take a break. This is our job, though. We we deliver a lot of bad news about people's plants of trees and stuff, so I guess we're used to it.
Ken Johnson: 26:54Yeah. I've I've ruined many a days with my answers.
Chris Enroth: 26:58It's like, how much does it cost to cut down a tree? Are you kidding me? That much? Yeah. That's expensive.
Chris Enroth: 27:05Sorry.
Ken Johnson: 27:07Yeah. So as I just did just summarize it. If you suspect it, send a sample off to confirm that's actually what you have because, again, you are we're going the tree removal route here. We're not spraying to to save it. So I would say better be safe than sorry to make sure that's actually what you've got before you get into some some very expensive management techniques here.
Ken Johnson: 27:29Mhmm. Yep.
Chris Enroth: 27:32Well, Ken, there there's one disease that I have seen a lot of this year, and it happened a lot more. It seemed to come through more for you folks in kind of that Central Southern portion of the state, and that is fire blight on ornamental pears. Now this is one I'm like, yeah. It's fine. It's okay.
Chris Enroth: 27:58I don't really care about ornamental pears, the calorie pear, whatever you wanna call it, but I know some people do. Some people, this is a precious landscape tree. I understand that. But I also recognize the fact that this is also a species that is invading our natural wood forest and woodland areas. So, you know, take good with the bad, I guess, but I'm not too worried when a pear tree gets infected with fire blight.
Chris Enroth: 28:29Have you been seeing a lot of fire blight in your neck of the woods?
Ken Johnson: 28:31Yeah. This is the this is the feel good part of the podcast.
Chris Enroth: 28:34Yeah. Kill those plants.
Ken Johnson: 28:38Yeah. There's I've seen some. So my neighbors have some Callery Pear. It's got it's had fire bite in it for several years, but it's it's got quite a bit canopy thinning and all the the strikes, the the black shoots with the typical shepherd's crook there, the the tip curling over. Now it looks like it got hit by lightning or somebody burned it, thus fire blight.
Ken Johnson: 29:01So, yeah, seeing that, yeah, off and on, not only in calorie pear, but apples and crab apples, you can see it in there depending on the resistance those may have to that. So and that's one, you know, with with Callery Pear, personally, that would be if if you wanna save the tree, print it out. You typically wanna go eight inches, maybe a foot past where you can see symptoms. So typically on those branches, you'll see a discolored canker, kind of a sunken area. You wanna go eight, twelve inches below that to make your cut, more than likely, you're gonna have some of that of that bacteria in that branch that's not gonna be symptomatic yet, so making sure you're cutting into clean wood.
Ken Johnson: 29:45Ideally, you'd be doing this when it's dry or do it in the dormant season so you're not risking spreading this pathogen, sanitizing printers, ideally in between cuts. The other recommendation is, like, 10% bleach solution. That's pretty rough on metal, cause a lot of pitting and stuff, so you can look at alcohol or, like, sanitizing wipes. If you have some leftover from COVID, you could use those to wipe off printers, stuff, and sanitize them. On, you know, our what I would say more desirable plant apples and things like that, you're getting into a spray routine.
Ken Johnson: 30:24There's some some antibiotics and stuff. I don't know if those are available without a license. But you gotta be careful with those because, again, that can you can develop resistance to those. Mhmm. There there's copper sprays.
Ken Johnson: 30:39But really, in a home landscape, you're you're better off looking for plants that are resistant to fire blight instead of planting a susceptible cultivar of apple or something like that. Just not gonna eliminate the risk, but you're gonna reduce that risk quite a bit right off the bat. Mhmm.
Chris Enroth: 30:57Yeah. There if that damage makes it all the way to the main trunk of your tree also, just it cut it down. There's really not much you can do from there. As Ken said, there are some things. Most of them are available for, like, a commercial orchard grower or something like that.
Chris Enroth: 31:15That's who would be using a lot of these products to try to protect protect some of their their tree fruits. There's one brand, I believe, where you can buy streptomycin, the antibiotic, which, as Ken said and I think as most people know, antibiotic resistance is a real thing in humans, livestock, and plants. So use with caution. Just be aware of that.
Ken Johnson: 31:45Yeah. I don't know if we've got streptomycin resistance in Illinois, but other states do have it. So that's one of
Chris Enroth: 31:51Not to name names, Michigan, but, yes, they do.
Ken Johnson: 31:55Yeah. So that's why need you. If you do use it, make sure you're reading that label and do not use more than you need to or more often than you need to because you do not we don't wanna get resistance here because that just makes it that much more difficult to grow and manage.
Chris Enroth: 32:08Yeah. And doesn't look like they're coming out with new antibiotic formulations for homeowners, and probably not many, if at all, for commercial growers as well. So use them sparingly and just, yeah, cut down your calorie pear. I'm sorry if it is a beautiful price tree to you, but they're weak wooded. They drop branches all the time.
Chris Enroth: 32:32They're they have a lousy growth habit. Their flowers smell bad. What other there there's how many more reasons do you need? Yeah. There's better trees out there.
Ken Johnson: 32:43Yes.
Chris Enroth: 32:44I don't If
Ken Johnson: 32:45you need I If you need suggestions, stop by your local office and get it under the canopy guide.
Chris Enroth: 32:51We have hundreds and thousands to give out. Yes. If you need that under the Canopy guide, I will happily mail them out to you. All I need is a mailing address, and you're gonna get at least 300.
Ken Johnson: 33:07Alright. So another one that think we're seeing an uptick in now that it's getting warmer and drying out again is blossom end rot. Now you usually usually see this in in tomatoes, but you can also get it in peppers and cucurbits and all kinds of other things. But it's another one that's rearing its ugly head, it seems like.
Chris Enroth: 33:28Yeah. It it's one that I've definitely got several calls about, I think, because we had a very dry springtime, very dry early summer as well, and people maybe were watering infrequently, which can be which is the cause for creating this blossom end rot. But then also we had a lot of lot more rain in July here, which would have, again, swung the soil saturation pendulum to, weigh on one side. And then you swing back to dry, and that's a inconsistent watering where the plant can't take up calcium into its system up from the roots into its tissues. And without consistent watering, that calcium can't move, and you wind up with blossom end rot, which is key to that formation of that that blossom end or that that tissue skin part of that fruit.
Chris Enroth: 34:30So we that that is the cause. Although a lot of folks will say, ah, I just need to put eggshells or, you know, antacid tablets in my tomato planting hole. That probably won't hurt, but it's not helping, at least not this year. Eggshells are incredibly durable and strong. It takes probably at least one growing season for them to break down for that calcium to then become plant available.
Chris Enroth: 35:00So you you could grind them up small tiny little particle sizes to then release that calcium, but guess what? Your soil already has probably enough calcium in it anyway. You are going to help reduce blossom end rot with consistent watering. And to achieve that, I say mulch, baby. You gotta mulch.
Chris Enroth: 35:23Gotta insulate that soil with something so that doesn't dry out and get, like, super fast.
Ken Johnson: 35:29Mulch is your friend
Chris Enroth: 35:30Mhmm.
Ken Johnson: 35:31In in more ways than one. That's right. And and I think we've done maybe a couple podcasts on this now, we can always link to that if you wanna get real really into the weeds. And a lot of it do depend on we're talking about tomatoes, the cultivar. Some of them are just very prone to it.
Ken Johnson: 35:48It It almost seems like no matter what you do, they're gonna happen. Beef steak and and things like that. And some of the I think Roma sometimes because of those really elongated fruits, you see it quite a bit. But cherry tomatoes, never once seen it. Doesn't matter how badly you treat them, how infrequently you water them.
Ken Johnson: 36:05I don't think I've ever seen that in cherry tomatoes. So cultivar selection can play a role too.
Chris Enroth: 36:12Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm mean to my cherry tomatoes, and they still won't stop giving me cherry tomatoes. Anything else come to mind while we've been talking? We really haven't had much in terms of, like, anthracnose.
Chris Enroth: 36:27That's been pretty tame. Not much rust. Not many rust calls. Nothing really about peach leaf curl. Not like, none of the usuals that I normally get.
Chris Enroth: 36:37Japanese beetle has even been pretty quiet this year in terms of questions.
Ken Johnson: 36:42Yeah. They haven't gotten Japanese beetle question in couple years. That's They've really slowed down around here. I think a lot of visitors are not as bad as they had been. We've kinda we get that peak, and now we're on the downward slope for that.
Chris Enroth: 36:58Oh, maybe yeah. Well, let's talk about it then, Ken. Japanese beetles. Why aren't we seeing Japanese beetle questions? Do we we don't know, do we?
Ken Johnson: 37:06No. I say So for for here in Jacksonville, you know, when I first started, we'd be getting multiple questions every year, every summer. But in the last several years, I I think even going back to COVID before COVID, they really started tailing off. I don't think last year two years ago, I don't think we got any questions about them. I haven't gotten any questions about Japanese beetle this year.
Ken Johnson: 37:30So I think that it's probably multiple reasons. One, I think they've been around for a long time now. People kinda know what to do about them. Two, I and at least in my yard, I haven't really I haven't seen any this year in my yard. Usually, I'd see a few on coneflower.
Ken Johnson: 37:46My corn hasn't soaked yet, so so I haven't seen them on there. Seamon raspberries, but I haven't seen them this year. And with insect populations, you know, though, we've got the the peaks and the valleys. And think a lot of times with with newer, you know, invasive species and stuff, we get this this buildup. We get this really big peak, and then they kinda level out after a while as new predators find them or for whatever reason, those populations tend to level out.
Ken Johnson: 38:16And I think at least here in Jacksonville, we've kinda hit that level out and and declining a little bit. You know? Yeah. So I I just haven't seen a lot. I haven't heard any reports of them being really bad anymore in particular.
Ken Johnson: 38:31I was talking with one of our master gardeners this morning. She said last year, they've got a linden tree. They usually, you know, would put it down to, like, a third half of the tree even from the top. And I think she said last year, it wasn't nearly as bad. This year, it has very little damage on it so far.
Ken Johnson: 38:47So don't have any particular reason, but I think we're just populations are low, it sounds like.
Chris Enroth: 38:56Well, I'll take it. Yeah. I I remember they showed up in McDonough County the same year as Emerald Asheboro showed up. It's, like, 2014, '20 '15. And I that was a very busy summer for me.
Chris Enroth: 39:11And the secretary, Laurie, she would call back, and she would say, you have another Japanese beetle question. And I felt like a broken record. I would just say the same thing over and over again multiple times a day for about a month. And I even had an email, just a a draft, you know, template of what to do about Japanese beetles, and I just send, send, send, send. And, yeah, I don't I don't use that email anymore.
Chris Enroth: 39:38And, and I don't even remember what I said back then, but it's yeah. I will take it. We still have emerald ash borer, and it's like, that is one invasive insect that I think will probably be protecting our ash trees forever until we figure out if something else what to do.
Ken Johnson: 39:58Yeah. We used to do a Japanese beetle article every year for good growing, and we haven't done that for several years now.
Chris Enroth: 40:05Haven't had to. Yeah. Well, that was a lot of great information about some of the common plant problems we've been seeing this year. Aster yellows. Is it Aster yellows?
Chris Enroth: 40:19Or is it a dastardly coneflower mite? Oak wilt, some fire blight, and, of course, blossom end rot, which is a very common question. And then, hey, a little bit of good news about Japanese beetles not being so bad anymore, at least for now. At
Ken Johnson: 40:36least where we're at. Well, yeah. We're we're angry as of Aaron and David.
Chris Enroth: 40:40Yeah. Yeah. The wave has pushed farther westward into Missouri and Kansas and stuff. So apologize to all you people out there if if you're listening.
Ken Johnson: 40:48It'll get better eventually, maybe.
Chris Enroth: 40:50Yes. Hope so. Well, the Good Morning Podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Ken Johnson. And thank you, Ken, for hanging out with me today. As always, chatting about, oh, them troublesome plants and why we love them so much.
Chris Enroth: 41:07So thanks, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 41:09Yes. Thank you. I'm gonna check my cone flowers out, make sure I got all my Aster yellows out of there, and see if I can find some mites.
Chris Enroth: 41:18Sounds like a plan.
Ken Johnson: 41:19And let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 41:24Oh, we shall do this again next week. We got a garden bite coming at you, so looking forward to that. Fun little short episode for you next week, and then back to the old grind here as we get some end of the season good growing episodes back at you. So well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and is listening. Or if you're watching us on YouTube, watching.
Chris Enroth: 41:46And as always, keep on growing. Take a drink of my tiny cup of water.
Ken Johnson: 42:04Go to the dentist.
Chris Enroth: 42:05Gotta last me all afternoon. But these are the same cups that they make you, like, spit into. And it's gonna require a greenhouse for me and maybe a trip to The Bahamas. But other than that Yeah. We'll figure it out.
Chris Enroth: 42:19I'm kidding. We won't do that. Cut that part out, Ken.