Late blight came in with a vengeance last summer. It caused severe tomato and potato losses, hitting home gardeners and organic farmers and larger commercial growers.

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This is the final set of articles for the 2009 season of the Landscape Alert newsletter. Click here for an index of articles on topics covered this year. Educators and specialists have worked hard to inform readers about current issues and crop production throughout the last few months.

We will continue to publish timely articles to the Landscape Alert web site. Not signed up for our email notification? Send an email to catalert@msu.edu with your full name and note that you wish to subscribe to the landscape edition. You can also sign up to received RSS feeds when new articles are posted. Look for the bright orange RSS feed logo on the right side of this page.

We love to hear feedback from our readers. Do you have a comment or suggestion? Please send it to catalert@msu.edu. Indicate whether you are referring to our fruit, vegetable, field crop or landscape edition.

Thank you. - Joy Landis, editor and Andrea Buchholz, asst. editor

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Dave Smitley...In late May and June of this year several arborists from Ann Arbor and the western suburbs of Detroit reported seeing an usual number of Norway and sugar maples with some upper branches that were dead, wilting or had stunted leaves. The affected branches were usually scattered about the crown, among other relatively healthy branches. The branch dieback was usually observed on stressed street trees that were either old, growing in poor soil, or restricted by pavement.

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Gerry Adams, Dept. Plant Pathology, MSU

MSU Diagnostic Services and several professors, campus arborists and others have had quite a struggle with diagnosing the cause of the many mysterious problems in maples that have appeared this year. Maples are not the only trees we are encountering with such problems though. Equally mysterious samples of damaged or dead spruce and oak have arrived for diagnosis.

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Thomas Dudek...Hardening plants or providing dormancy requires many conditions to occur all at the same time within the plant. Nursery practices like fertilizer applications, irrigation, pruning and light levels all contribute to how successful plants will overwinter and avoid winter injury.

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Dave Smitley...All the rain we had this summer has stopped and lawns in much of the state are looking dry. Dry weather in late September and October is when we are most likely to see grub damage. The reason for this is that a infestation of greater than 10 grubs per ft2 can consume more than 50 percent of all the turf roots in a lawn. As long as the soil remains moist and fertility levels are adequate, the turf plants will continue to grow new roots and take-up enough water.

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Kevin Frank...After a summer of rain and cool temperatures, September has had some of the driest and warmest weather we’ve had all year. If the turf hasn’t been irrigated, its growth has certainly slowed, and it’s unlikely you’ve seen any great response from a fertilizer application in late August or early September. If you didn’t apply any fertilizer in early September and are looking to boost the turf as the fall moves along, I would probably wait until some moisture returns before applying any fertilizer.

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Howard Russell...Autumn is the time of year when we humbly and gratefully thank our lucky stars for surviving, though possibly not unscathed, the summer onslaught of biting insects, stinging insects and other annoying arthropods. However, we are not out of the woods yet: there could be large numbers of insects out there waiting to invade our homes and businesses. I say “could be” because we won’t know that for sure until we get the first few frosts of the season.

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Jeff Andresen...After an extended period of mostly sunny, dry weather across the state and region (many areas have been dry since August 30-31), forecast guidance is now suggesting some major upper air changes during the upcoming week. The upper air ridging pattern across the region that has led to the abnormally dry conditions (In the State Climatology Office, we=ve referred to it as our Michigan version of “California weather.”) will give way to a troughing pattern by early next week, resulting in wetter and possibly cooler weather.

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Willie Kirk...After visiting several smaller acreage tomato growers in western Mecosta County, it became clear that the 2009 epidemic of late blight was extraordinary. All fields visited had late blight. The symptoms ranged from about five percent of the foliage and one percent of the fruits to 100 percent of the foliage and fruits infected. Clearly, this epidemic was beyond the experience of any of these growers who were largely stunned and certainly one of the worst I had ever experienced.

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By Thomas Dudek...A new resource is available to landscapers, nursery growers and grounds managers who work with herbaceous perennials and need to identify diseases that impact these plants. Diseases of Herbaceous Perennials by Mark Gleason, Margery Daughtrey, Ann Chase, Gary Moorman, and Daren Mueller is published by The American Phytopathological Society.

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