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Re: Formal intro (cherry tree)

   Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 17:08:44 +1300
   From: Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>

   Can't answer most of your questions - that would best be done by people
   who live in your area I would think - but I am concerned about that dead
   cherry tree!

According to the neighbors and my own investigations, the flowering cherry
died from lack of water over a long period of time.  The water stress also
caused wood borers to invade the wood.  One section of the trunk (one
branch and some sprouts) was still alive but most gardening people told me
the tree wasn't worth saving at this point (and after being played with by
several neighborhood kids who play ball on our lawn, with our permission,
it's completely beyond repair).  The tree was the only planting in the
entire front lawn so I'm not even worried about the borers spreading.  I'm
going to create a no-water garden (desert and medit plants) in the
front...flowering cherries are lovely but I'm not sure they are worth the
effort out here.

   Silver Leaf is a fungus that attacks cherry trees and a range of other
   plants (mainly Rosaceae). It gets in through some injury (like a pruning
   cut, or a naturally-broken branch) and it then fills up the
   water-conducting tissues of the host plant, causing, at first, a partial
   dehydration, and eventually killing the tree. The characteristic symptom
   in a live tree is that the leaves get a pale silvery sheen to them, and
   new leaves are smaller than normal. The branch first affected will die,
   and the symptoms will soon be seen in another branch. If you cut off an
   affected branch, the presence of the fungus will show up at the cut as a
   brownish ring (complete or partial) in the wood, a short distance in
   from the bark. [rest clipped]

The tree/damage doesn't look like this at all. 

Does anyone know if the wood of the tree is usuable?  The trunk is
straight, about 4 feet high and maybe 5 or 6 inches in diameter.  Usuable
for woodworking, that is.

   > The land used to be commercial orchards and the soil here is just 
   > amazing.

   You lucky people! Old orchard (or truck crop) land is usually in very
   good condition, unless it has been over-dosed with fertilizers and
   sprays!!

:-) I've never seen soil this good in my whole life.  Not in areas bigger
than a small plot anyway.  It makes me sick that the neighborhood is
converting to apartment buildings and covering up all that good earth.
Since the house was built in 1940 and the orchards were gone by then, I'm
hoping there were few or no sprays.  It was WWII that really made the
chemical crop industry take off (what else do you do with all that leftover
war material?)  At some point I want to research the area to find out what
crop was grown and what company.  Then maybe I can find out about additives
and sprays.

   Mikel will probably - eventually - learn quite a lot about plants from
   you! You've no idea how much I have learned from my Moira! But it has
   taken over 45 years - so far! I'm still learning slowly, but I am still
   not an enthusiastic gardener, although I do love to be of assistance to
   her around the garden!

*grin* I'll forward your letter...maybe it will give him hope.  He can
recognize parsley now but he did confuse a brambleberry seedling with a
strawberry plant the other day...

   > So far, the only pest problem that does anything worth noting, is >
coddling moths in the apples.

   Here, we can buy simple traps containing the sex pheromone of the female
   codling moth, I would expect something similar to be available where you
   are. You hang these in the tops of your trees (one trap is supposed to
   manage up to five trees if they are fairly close together) and they
   attract the male moths which get stuck on the sticky pad inside. The
   idea is that the females will not get mated, and will lay sterile eggs,
   which don't hatch - therefore no grubs in the apples.

I've thought about these but have heard that they actually draw the moths
to the plants.

   Our experience of these is that the traps are insufficient on their own,
   although they reduce the problem. However, if you inspect the trap
   regularly, you can see when the male moths start to get caught, and if
   you *then* spray with something that will not bother you, you can get
   very good control. Pyrethrum which has not had "synergists" added is
   harmless to most people (I presume you know that p. is a natural plant
   extract?) and is effective if sprayed at the times when the traps tell
   you the moths have "arrived", but if it does bother you, then it is

Nope nope nope nope.  I will not use pryethrum.  The inert ingrediants are
horribly nasty.  Even the active ingrediant alone is not okay.  It doesn't
matter that something is "natural."  When you extract and concentrate and
etc to get your product you concentrate all the pesticides used in growing
it and there are usually chemicals used in the extraction process.  Even
with organically grown and processed extractions the very fact of its being
concentrated can set off reactions in many chemically sensitive people
(though I'm okay with organic essential oils).  It's no longer natural when
it's taken out of it's natual element.  Besides, I'm planting all sorts of
veggies and fruits near the apple trees.

   possible that neem oil may be OK for you. Neem is another natural
   product which has been used in India for centuries and has only recently
   become available in the west. Neem works by interrupting the life-cycle
   of the /immature/ insects, it has no effect on the adults, but it
   definitely kills larvae, and is said to kill eggs too. 

Neem oil is a sensitizer for many folks with MCS.  I don't know if it is
for me or not (probably not).  One friend of mine gets terribly ill from
exposure to it.  

I will use marginally safe things when I don't have many choices (like I
was able to get no-VOC paint, but not paint with no fugicides) but I don't
*have* to spray my apple trees.  About as far as I'm willing to go is
vegetable oil if that would indeed work as a substitute for dormant oil
(with 2 dwarf trees I could do each bud with a paintbrush).

Thanks for writing!

Cyndi
_______________________________________________________________________________
Oakland, California            Zone 9 USDA; Zone 16 Sunset Western Garden Guide
Disabled, chemically sensitive, wheelchair user          Organic Gardening only
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There's nothing wrong with me.  Maybe there's                     Cyndi Norman
something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG)                   cnorman@best.com
__________________________________________________ http://www.best.com/~cnorman
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