Spring Ramble, 2017

We’re just past the midpoint of the spring season—and this spring is just about as opposite as can be from last spring.Last year at this time, and for the second year in a row, spring had been warm and dry. This year, in nearly a complete turnabout, we’ve had extremes from warm to cool, but, more important, it’s been wet. This combination is leading to some interesting diseases showing up, and at least one may be beneficial.

We’re also seeing the aftermath of last summer’s drought and the mild winter. Some of you may also have been nipped by a freeze, as Westhampton reported a low temperature of 30 degrees on the morning of May 4.

So, lots to cover—and I’m off on my May ramble.

One of the phenomena that we see in warmer and wetter springs looks much like the classic jester’s hat, with its pointy projections and comical appearance. But, in this case, it shows up as an orange sphere with pointed tentacles reaching outward and hanging from the needles and twigs of our native Eastern red cedar, which is also called a juniper. These golf ball-sized orange masses are a fungus known as the cedar apple rust, or Gymnosporangium juniper-viginianae. It’s a fascinating disease, because in order for it to survive, it must move back and forth between its two hosts, the junipers and apples or crabapples.

The galls form from mid-spring on, and the mass actually is gelatinous and produces a telial (projection) horn that contains the spores that perpetuate the fungi. When these spores are released, they can travel several miles, though the infections usually occur within a hundred feet or so.

On crabapples and apples that are susceptible to the fungus (many are resistant), tiny yellow spots appear on the leaves after a spring infection. As these spots mature, they become yellow/orange, swell with a red border, and the spots then develop tiny red spots or dots. By the middle of the summer, small, cup-like structures with tubes are visible on the undersides of the mature leaf lesions.

In order for the cycle to be completed, we need a wet spring (check) with wetness present for four to six hours, and temperatures between 50 and 70 degrees (check again). Once the foliage of the apple or crabapple is infected, homeowners often notice the dots appearing on the foliage—but by the time it’s noticed, it’s too late, because the next infection stage has taken place, with the spores moving back to the junipers from mid-summer to early fall.

The following spring, they cause kidney-shaped galls on the junipers. It’s these galls that lead to the development of the orange masses with the horns, and with a wet spring the two-year cycle starts all over again.

The disease is rarely fatal, and it often can be controlled by cutting out the galls before the lelial horns are formed, and this can be done late in the winter, up to early April. Another strategy is to use only resistant varieties of crabapples and apples. We have Eastern red cedars near our orchard, and it’s never been an issue that we’ve had to make any treatments for.

The damp spring may result in some good news, though. Last year, some local areas and a wide swath of the Hudson Valley along Interstate 84 were devastated by gypsy moth caterpillars that left mostly oak trees stripped of their foliage. This, on top of last summer’s drought, put these trees under enormous stress, as they attempted to recover and re-foliate.

The mild winter was a blessing to the trees, but a very cold winter may have controlled some of the moth egg masses. That didn’t happen. But in wet springs, there is a fungal disease that can flourish and effectively kill the gypsy moth caterpillars. It’s a bit too early to be sure this will happen this year, but the long-term outlook for May is wet and cool, both good signs.

You may have read or heard that last year was a terrible year for rodents. Well, it actually was great for rodents, because they went on a reproductive frenzy. Mild winters, plentiful food sources—and the mice and voles have just gone bonkers. One critical result is that because of very high mouse populations, there is a corresponding increase in the tick populations, as the mice are a host for the ticks. So, you need to be even more vigilant when it comes to tick awareness.

In the garden, though, the issue is voles. Often referred to as pine mice and meadow mice, we actually have two types of voles that are not mice … but voles. They have shorter tails than mice, shorter ears, slightly chubbier bodies, and they cause different issues.

Unlike mice, voles reproduce year-round. Voles feed on plant roots, some bulbs, and herbaceous plant crown and bark.

When we took the burlap off our short espaliered apple and pear trees, we were shocked to see that branches 3 feet long had been stripped of their bark, and the trunks just above the soil line had been totally girdled by the voles’ feeding. In the garden, feeding had taken place among the primula crowns and around the hosta tips. When the maple leaf mulch was removed, the telltale tunneling of the voles was painfully evident. They don’t tunnel into the ground but along the surface of the ground, where they are well-hidden by snow and mulch.

There are several ways to deal with voles. First, be careful with your mulches. Never apply a mulch within a foot of an apple or pear tree trunk. Encourage owls to nest in your trees. Become best friends with a good mouser—that’s a cat that’s a good hunter. And while I don’t think there are any repellents or poisons that are effective on voles, the old-fashioned wooden mouse traps baited with small pieces of apple often work. Check them daily and rebait them often. Be as persistent as the voles.

I’ve seen people do amazing things with forsythia, but I’ve seen just as many butcher this plant. There are some simple rules, and it’s all about the pruning.

If you prune forsythia in late fall or in the winter, you will remove most, if not all, of the flower buds. Prune and reduce this plant now to encourage new growth and next year’s blooms.

Larger plants should have one-quarter of their canes (branches) reduced or removed every year. If canes get long enough to bend and touch the ground, they can re-root and create a messy mass of tangled stems. Yes, there are different colors of forsythia, but most range from dull to brilliant yellow. The newer varieties tend to be the more vibrant in color. These make great privacy hedges, but they do need to be maintained.

You may be getting plenty of offers from bulb companies and mail order nurseries to order your spring bulbs that won’t even get planted until next fall. So why order them now? Why even think about them now? I thought this was a bit crazy, as far as marketing goes, but there is some logic to it. You can go out into your landscape right now and make notes about bulbs that need to be replanted, bulb plantings that you might want to expand, or new areas that need that spring color that the bulbs provide. They’re either blooming now or have just finished, so now is the time to make your observations and notes, then look at the catalogs to see what’s available.

By the fall, you’ll have forgotten everything, unless you take lots of pictures. And when you order these bulbs now, you generally get a discount that won’t be available in the fall. The bulbs are still shipped at fall planting time.

Coming soon: An exploration of growing the “greater tomater,” a challenge to many, and yet the most planted vegetable I garden that’s actually a fruit. And a new gardening book that may be a keeper.

Keep growing!