3 Shrubs’ Diseases to Keep an Eye On: Lawn Care DeKalb, IL Experts’ Advice

The warm season is a few weeks away and of course you can hardly wait to begin your yearly lawn care and gardening activities. Caring for your shrubs is an important part of all lawn maintenance programs – and this care should also include early inspections in the search for signs of diseases. Before engaging in lawn care, landscaping and gardening, take a walk and get a closer look at all your shrubs, small trees, ornamentals, hedges and bushes to see if they don’t need specific treatment. Today, our lawn care DeKalb, IL experts want to offer you a crash course on the three most common shrub diseases.

1. Fire Blight

This is a bacterium attacking mostly the roses’ families. It needs extensive periods of cool and wet weather to cause the infection and the following plants’ death. After a long, wet and cold winter you can see the signs of fire blight in early spring: the branch tips of your roses are bent back on themselves and they appear as if they are on fire.

When left unattended, fire blight is spread in spring by the bees and other pollinating insects to other shrubs, trees or flowers. In order to cure this disease you should better wait until the weather is dry and hot. If you notice fire blight symptoms on your shrubs or small trees, make sure you call your local lawn care DeKalb, IL specialists for a diagnosis and a treatment during pruning season.

2. Botrytis / Gray Mold

This fungus attacks buds, flower buds, leaves, flowers, stems and fruit. It affects a wide range of woody and herbaceous vegetation and is most visible in open flowers, looking like gray mold. It manifests in full power in early spring as it has no problems with over-wintering, leading to the flower buds’ death. Gray Mold loves humidity, moisture and over-watering, so be careful with your lawn watering activities in early spring.

3. Powdery Mildew

This is also a fungus and is quite common. Unfortunately, it also comes together with subgroups and strains that are plant-specific. Powdery mildew fungi look like powdered sugar which covers the vegetation’s leaves. Such fungi also infiltrate into the inner leaves’ and buds’ cells and even small twigs, negatively impacting growth and development of shrubs and small trees. Powdery mildew thrives in temperatures that vary and in wet / humid weather conditions.

Proliferating very fast, it only needs three consecutive warm and dry days each followed by cool and humid nights to get fully establish and initiate the attack. Freestanding water on the leaves does inhibit the proliferation of powdery mildew. However, such water accumulations can also sustain the evolution of other diseases. Powdery mildew is air borne and can be spread by pollinators and all insects. If you encounter such symptoms in your shrubs’ assessment process – especially in spring or early summer – you need to call your local lawn care DeKalb, IL specialists to treat the affected plants with fungicide treatments.

Two diseases to watch out for when performing the early spring tree and shrub evaluations are the bacterial blight and cedar-quince rust are other. These diseases, caused by a bacterium and a fungus, respectively, usually attack lilacs and cedar trees, leading to damages or the plants’ death. Make sure all your shrubs and trees are properly inspected this time of year and that you call professional help to solve the problems.