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DCH is the only nonprofit membership organization in Delaware that mobilizes and inspires community greening statewide in urban and suburban environments. By inspiring an appreciation for improving our environment through horticulture, education, and conservation, we have become a leader in improving and beautifying communities by harnessing the power of our members, volunteers, and staff to go out and make a difference. Our members come from Delaware and the surrounding region and bring with them a passion for plants only matched by that of our staff members. With more than 600 active and dedicated volunteers annually, we have a tremendous amount of community support, which allows us to accomplish the impossible.
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Nora will be showing you a great composting tool, a Three Bin Composter. This is an excellent composting method for large yards and those who have a lot of garden and food waste.
It's time for the pest of the week! Today's pest is Cedar Rust.
Cedar rusts are a group of fungi that infect several species of flowering trees, including apples, pears, crabapples, hawthorn, quince, and serviceberry. These rusts require two hosts – one being a juniper (most frequently eastern red cedar) and the other being one of the plants listed above. On the eastern red cedar, the rust forms orange fruiting bodies in April and May that look practically extraterrestrial. The spores are blown by wind to nearby susceptible trees, where they create spots on leaves and sometimes galls on small twigs. On the back of the leaf spots, there will be a spiny blob that is easy to mistake for a caterpillar. The fungus belongs to the genus Gymnosporangium, but there are individual species that affect specific flowering trees.
Since both plants are necessary to complete the fungal lifecycle, large orchards will attempt to remove all eastern red cedar in a two-mile radius around their properties. This is virtually impossible for the home gardener, but thankfully it is not necessary. While cedar rusts may decrease the productivity of fruit trees, they rarely defoliate them, and even more rarely kill them. In the landscape, cedar rusts are mostly an aesthetic issue.
If you do wish to try to deal with cedar rusts, there are a few things you can do. The first is to plant resistant varieties, if possible. Good cultural practices, like cleaning up diseased leaves and keeping them out of the compost, will also help. You can also prune out diseased branches of both cedar and the flowering species to keep the spores from spreading. If you really can’t live with it, preventative fungicides are a possibility. They should be sprayed on the flowering species at the time when the galls on the cedars are releasing spores. Use caution as not all effective fungicides are appropriate for edible plants.
If there is a weed you can’t identify or one that you would like to see featured, please leave us a comment below.
This is the last week to donate to A Community Thrives! DCH needs your help to meet our goal and grow the Neighborhood Tree Steward Program. Your donations will support projects such as street tree plantings, vacant lot stabilization, and streetscape beautification programs in communities that need them the most.
Please visit acommunitythrives.mightycause.com/organization/Delaware-Center-For-Horticulture today and give what you can.
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(302) 658-6262