Blog updates focus on news and tips for tree removal and tree care in the Denver metro area. Content is reviewed by ArborScape's certified arborist and plant health care experts (QS). Enjoy.
1) Examine Your Plants then Prune or Blast with Water
Word on the street is that a single little aphid can produce 80 baby aphids a week! It’s important to carefully examine your plants weekly for the little buggers. They live on the underside of leaves and tend to be found in groups or colonies. If you find them, you can blast them with water, collect and squish them while wearing your favorite garden gloves, or clip off the branch or shoot where they have congregated. These methods are effective with a mild aphid gathering.
2) Over Fertilization
Be careful not to over fertilize your garden. Since the aphid preys upon the youngest parts of a plant, fertilizers can cause an abundance of new growth. If you do fertilize then it’s best to use fertilizers that release slowly over time.
3) Dish Soap to the Rescue!
Another effective method is to use ordinary household dish soap or mild laundry detergent which destroys the aphid’s waxy coating on their bodies causing dehydration. Mix two teaspoons of the soap or detergent into a spray bottle of lukewarm water and spray the leaves once a week.
4) Avoid Plants that Aphids Love
Birch trees are known to attract aphids, so don’t plant your garden near one. A better plan is to plant Queen Anne’s lace, spearmint, or fennel because these are known to attract aphid predators such as ladybugs and lacewings.
1/2) Commercial Aphid Insecticides
If all else fails, you can use some commercial insecticides to kill the buggers. Gardeners use insect growth regulators (IGRs), pyretherins, and/or insecticidal soaps. IGRs work in different ways to kill aphids. Some mimic juvenile hormones which prevents the aphid from reproducing. Other IGRs interfere with the production of “chitin” which causes problems with exoskeleton formation. Pytherins are extracted from chrysanthemums and they attack the nervous systems of insects. Finally,
insecticidal soap sprays can suffocate the aphid by washing away its protective waxy coating, or the soap sprays can hinder the permeability of the cell membranes. Any of these insecticide types will help dramatically reduce your aphid population.
Today we published the first of what will be many updates to a tree trimming and tree care glossary of terms. The arborist is in love with accuracy and he may use the most accurate and obscure arboricultural words in diagnosing your tree. That may leave you in doubt. You want a tree that looks good and is healthy on the inside, wittout knowing the entire biological process. At the same we thought it would be helpful to start a glossary, eventually one that is searchable with definitions that make sense to any tree owner.
Our editorial assistant Amanda helped in putting this glossary together. We tried to define these terms in the barest of language. Please let us know if any questions.
The Aphid: A Brutish and Uncivilized Thug
Nasty little creatures called aphids can destroy a lovely garden. These brutish insects hang out in colonies and swarm poor unsuspecting garden plants. They are tiny, about the size of a sharpened pencil tip and their little pear-shaped bodies feed on fragile young leaves, new shoots, and twigs or branches. What’s worse is that while these aphids feed, they leave a residue (often called “aphid honeydew“) on the plants. The residue is a blackish brown color that resembles mold and essentially suffocates a plant leaf preventing it from photosynthesizing properly. The leaves then curl and turn brown. What did your garden ever do to deserve this?
Ladybugs to the Rescue
One natural way to get rid of aphids is to introduce lady bugs into your yard. You could spray aphids in your garden with pesticides, but do you really want to eat produce that has synthetic chemicals on it? Fortunately, the natural world has a provided a mechanism of aphid control for wrestling control over your garden. The almighty predator of the smarmy aphid is none other than the precious ladybug. The ladybug will provide natural aphid control by feasting upon colonies until its belly is full, and then feast some more. Adult ladybugs can eat up to a 1,000 aphids a day. Not bad for a precious lady.
You Can’t Cage Ladybugs So How Do they Stay in the Garden?
Yes it’s true, ladybugs are fierce aphid predators, but they are also free spirits. Ladybugs like to roam the world in search of the perfect flower where they can have a cup of tea with their friends and swap tall tales of aphid conquests. So, keeping them in your garden is a challenge but not impossible. Here are some tips for keeping the precious ladybugs in your garden:
- Since ladybugs use the sun for navigation, release them at a time when there is no sun! This means releasing them after the sun sets or before the sun rises.
- Before you release them water your garden so that they have nice fresh water to drink from.
- And another thing you can do before you release them is to cool them off in the fridge. This tends to make the ladybugs a bit lethargic and less likely to seek adventure elsewhere so quickly.
Most of your local nurseries have ladybugs for sale or you can buy them online. Treat your garden right this summer – nature’s way!
Please let us know if you have tried ladybugs and what kind of results you got.
This post is by Justin Rickard, a writer living on the Front Range of Colorado.
We have an overview on ash tree care but one thing you should know is that ash trees very commonly break from snow weight. Thus ash tree trimming can be quite extensive and you will lose some shade in the short term. However over the course of the growing season, you’ll find that the tree grows into its new look. Ash trees branch out again quickly, so the newly pruned ash will really beautify and provide shade cover for years to come.
And not break in the winter. Remember, we offer winter tree trimming after the leaves have fallen so you can wait until then and earn a winter discount as a bonus.
Trim an ash right the first time and it will hold its value. Thoughts?
19 May, 2010
in Spring Tree Care
by Matt
We’ve gotten, rain, snow, sleet and hail in May 2010. You may not have to water your trees as much as past years. There is no hard and fast rule about how much water a tree needs. But you can over do it.
Taking into account the amount of snow we had in Denver, the ground is very saturated. Consider the following factors.
- Drainage - Is the tree on a hill or in a low lying gully. Water will move away on a hill and pool in a gully.
- Species – Volunteer trees need like Chinese elm need less water for instance.
- Tree Size - Smaller trees may respond better to a drip watering system while larger trees need a deep root watering.
- Tree context – A cottonwood is a water hog, so it will take more than its fair share from a neighboring tree. Xeriscaping, lawn condition and proximity to pavement and other structures also play a factor.
This is just a high level overview. We’ve looked at trees that the owner thought was stressed from drought but it turned out the tree was getting too much water. The symptoms are similar. Here’s more food for thought on this and also some pictures of overwatered trees.
17 May, 2010
in ArborScape News
by Matt
On Saturday, we had seven of our tree crew members attend an aerial rescue seminar at Wash Park. It is part of our continuing education units required by the ISA. It was sponsored by Vermeer. They talked about new equipment and demonstrated a proper way to do an aerial rescue. In fact, we are now implementing a new technique into our safety training.
FYI. David has never had to do an aerial rescue in three decades of tree work. But it’s better to be safe then sorry because it does happen.
We recently won a contract from the City of Denver to take care of tree removal and other emergency tree services for the City and County of Denver. While we’ve been an approved and licensed tree removal company for private work and have done some tree trimming directly for the city, we are excited to serve and keep the streets safe from debris and other hazardous arboricultural situations.
Update 5/19/2010
So it turns out the City of Denver gives out notices to property owners who need to remove a tree or a tree stump that affects right of ways. The tickets can be hefty ( up to $999 for the third citation). I can’t offer a direct link to the ticket amounts because of the city’s addiction to PDF but here is the link to download.
http://denvergov.org/Portals/626/documents/Forestry%20use%20of%20administrative%20citations%20regs.pdf
We received our first list from the city and you’d be surprised how many swings need to be removed. Are these swing sets or tree swings? Does anyone know the city ordinance on tree swings?
Something we’ve heard from our plant health clients, folks who have us fertilize and protect their trees or lawn on a recurring basis, is that we need to provide more information about the process. What’s been done, what’s coming and why. This was confirmed by a marketing strategy conducted by a consultant, Mike Hanbery.
Information matters.
Besides hiring George and adding two crews to be more responsive, we are also converting from a pen-and-ink card index, to a customized spray and lawn tracking system to better inform and serve our growing PHC client list.
Your invoice will include more detailed information about the service we provided today and for prepay customers, a running total on their balance. Eventually, the invoice will include a calendar of services provided and upcoming treatments. I hope this will help clients feel like they know a bit more about why their trees are doing so well.
If you have any other suggestions, please let us know.
I’ll admit it. Lawn aeration is not the most exciting thing to talk about. I’ve even had to resort to the “got aeration?” tactic in our ads, which in my 10 years as a copywriter I’ve never had to do. Aeration is plain boring, just like the “got_______” campaigns you see everywhere. So what better headline to use for a boring service?
Aeration is cheap and effective, making your lawn do what it naturally does. Nutrients are released, water can get to the root zone. The limited holes created are enough to allow in oxygen yet not allow water to leach out nutrients. It should be done on a yearly basis for most yards.
Aeration junkies profess that you should aerate 4 or 5 times a season. Some do-it-yourself sites have an aeration analysis process, followed by a three week waiting time for renting an aerating, followed by further checking. Sounds tiring for most people.
For an average size yard, the price for having an aeration service do it is the same as renting an aerator. So unless you love to do everything in your yard and want to do triple passes everywhere, I think your time is better spent in the garden, watching TV or staring at a wall. That’s all I got to say as I fight to stay awake while writing this post. Maybe it’s only boring writers who find aeration boring?
I was very surprised that there’s no bio-mass conversion facility in Denver metro. Woody plants and chips from trees are a growing renewable resource that can fire power plants. A conversion facility for chips and other wood seems like a good idea for Denver for three reasons.
- The building and operation of conversion plants create good, permanent jobs.
- Landfill space is reduced.
- Because of the prevalence of pine forests, which is a less desirable building material, bio-fuel production seems a natural for Denver.
The federal government is investing heavily in it. Here is the mission statement from the Biomass Crop Assistance Program sponsored by the USDA:
“Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) provides financial assistance to producers or entities that deliver eligible biomass material to designated biomass conversion facilities for use as heat, power, biobased products or biofuels.”
Putting aside that “biomass was considered a renewable source…after considerable lobbying by the forest products industry,” it seems to be a solid bridge to algae which may be the bio resource we all use in 50 years or sooner.
Any facility in Denver would have less of an ecological impact than natural gas powered plants. Woods chips are something we have right now and the biomass energy industry actively needs. That’s according to the biomass cover story in the April issue of ArborAge. However transportation costs make this a local affair.
Let’s start working on this for Denver.The west slope of Colorado has two BCAP approved facilities and several private ventures. Denver should as well.
Here is a list of qualified biofuels conversion facilities for the US. If you hear news on this topic please comment. We’re just tree trimmers after all.
