Blustery day - the kind of day that defines blustery, with winds blowing in several directions at once and huge light eddys of snow swirling around the house. The snow changed from heavy wet snow,almost raindrops, over to the light, frozen, dancing flakes as the wild north winds arrived. It felt as though we were living in a snow globe, freshly shaken so that the flakes swirled in rapid circles around the farmhouse. Nothing stayed, nothing stuck - although the commuters watched nervously. Snow of any kind, any amount, strikes near panic in Southern adults and near hysterical joy in their children. We Northern transplants like to chuckle knowingly and reminisce about blizzards we braved daily.... all true and generally the very reason we're not Northerners any more.
I consider Virginia winters nearly perfect, especially after managing the long dreariness of Great Lakes winters where the cold, gray overcast lasts for weeks at a time. Here we'll enjoy a couple of seasonable days, shivering and remarking about all the snow (that's <1/4") and later this week we'll be back gardening at sixty degrees. Marvelous!
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How I enjoyed reading your "Garden Notes"! I live in WI, just west of Milwaukee. Last night we had our first measurable snow. Lovely, but it will get old fast. Four months of this is a long time! Our daughter recently moved to Newport News & in her yard is a persimmon tree. Wonderful for a young lady who spent extensive time in California and learned how to love persimmons right off the tree! Last night she told me about "whitish scaly" patches on the tree. Any idea what this might be? I've been searching the internet for ideas. There were MANY ants around the tree last month. IS there a relationship between the ants and the scale? I hope you have some insight into the problem.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading more of your gardening notes!
Hi, Merry! Welcome to the farm! Glad you enjoyed the blog.
ReplyDeleteYou are right on target - it's likely that the ants have been "farming" soft scale on your daughter's persimmon. There's some good info from UC Davis in California, renowned for their fruit research. Click this link: . The solution is easy and organic. Before the tree leafs out in the spring - during any winter warm spells (which she will get to enjoy in Newport News and you, alas will not have in WI) - use a pump sprayer to coat the entire tree with dormant oil spray. It's available at most farm & garden centers and it is not necessary to buy brands that have chemical additives. The oil itself will smother the scale, so be sure that it's applied to "run-off" - in other words, SOAK bark, branches, twigs - everything. We spray all of our fruit trees and most of the other plants on the farm (except needled evergreens) with dormant oil during the ... well, dormant months (ha!). It's inexpensive, nontoxic and it saves us all kinds of pest problems come spring and summer. If there are any additional fungal problems, you can add some Bordeaux mix (sulfur)but it may not be necessary at all.
Of course, old persimmon wood can also have some lichen growth, so I'd suggest using Google image mode to search both scale and lichen to see which the patches are. Tiny patches, probably scale. Large >inch patches, maybe some other natural growth like lichen.
Rats! Blogspot ate the UC Davis link! Let's try that again:
ReplyDeletewww.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7411.html
Sorry that it's not taking my hyperlink code - you'll have to copy and past it into your browser until I figure out where I've gone wrong!