Protecting fruit trees, fixing lawn issues and freeze care for oaks and bottlebrush
Live oak suckers are part of the mature live oak tree, but should be removed with care. (Courtesy photo)
Q: I live in a rural area that is surrounded by large oak trees. They attract a variety of squirrels and other wildlife. Other than fencing off every tree, is there any way of protecting fruit trees from predators and birds?
A: I've been thinking about how best to answer this question from gardeners for all 55 years that I've been writing this column, and I still don't have a good response. Squirrels and raccoons are still going to climb. Birds are still going to fly. For my bird feeders, I've found raccoon and possum baffles (from Wild Birds Unlimited and others) that have done a great job at keeping those pests at bay. Obviously, I want birds to come to the feeders. There are tree nets (Ross Tree Netting and others) to cover trees as fruit is nearing maturity. But none of those is fallible. You can also devise sheet metal collars to wrap around tree trunks to keep the animals from climbing into the trees, but you must remove those each year to prevent girdling as the trunks expand. I've used humane traps in a "catch-and-release-elsewhere" program to capture damaging raccoons and armadillos in my greenhouse and garden respectively.
That's the sum total of 55 years' worth of brilliant thinking on the topic. (I'm not a hunter, plus it's illegal to harm these animals.)
This St. Augustine grass is healthy. (Courtesy photo)
Areas of St. Augustine have suddenly turned brown and died. (Courtesy photo)
Q: Areas of St. Augustine have suddenly turned brown and died. You'll note a line of browning grass parallel to the driveway. This has happened every year, but in different locations and in late August. I have assumed it was chinch bugs in the past because of hot, dry conditions, but the first half of this summer has been cooler than usual and not dry in this area. The other side of the driveway and backyard look fine. Do you think this is insects or a disease?
A: I can't tell for sure. Your photo shows a clear distinction between your lawn and the neighbor's. (Sorry for pointing you out!) The property line is the dividing line. Was a different product used on that one space than on the rest of the lawn? There are weed-and-feed products manufactured for Bermuda turf that can damage St. Augustine. Could one of those accidentally have been applied here? The damage looks like chinch bugs. They easy enough to confirm with certainty just by getting down on hands and knees and parting the grass on a hot, sunny afternoon. They're BB-sized black insects with white diamonds on their wings. They'll be at the edges of the dying areas.
The disease you would be seeing this time of year would be gray leaf spot, but I do not see it on the close-up photo you attached. It would cause small, gray-brown, diamond-shaped lesions on the blades (along the midribs) and sometimes on the runners as well. But infected grass shows yellow, not dead and brown like yours does. That's why I felt it might be chinch bugs or some type of herbicide injury.
This St. Augustine appears to have been damaged by chinch bugs and perhaps brown patch. (Courtesy photo)
Q: This happens every year in some part of our lawn. The grass starts out healthy, and then in the blink of an eye the grass starts dying. This year it all looked great, but then down by the street and driveway it started showing issues. Now it's walking its way down the right side of the sidewalk. Now it appears to have jumped to the other side of the walk. We were told it was chinch bugs, but we've been treating for them for the past month. Help if you can!
A: This looks for all the world like chinch bugs. The fading-to-brown areas in the hottest parts of your lawn (along concrete). Classic symptoms. See my description above. Your Texas Certified Nursery Professional can show you several labeled insecticides once you have seen and confirmed presence of the insects. You can always determine with certainty if you have active chinch bugs in your lawn and then treat accordingly.
Let me also step out onto a limb and mention in the parkway photo that I think I'm seeing some very circular brown areas of dead grass. That looks like remnant damage of brown patch, probably left over from last fall. On its own, brown patch is not fatal. It attacks only the blades. But it does weaken the grass so that diseases can finish it off more easily. Watch for it in October and November. Infected blades will pull loose from runners without resistance. Labeled turf fungicides will control it.
Q: We have a very mature live oak tree that produced many suckers a few years ago. The ones that are left now are about 3 feet tall. Are these actual trees? If I cleared everything and left a couple standing, will they go on to be regular live oak trees?
A: Not only are they regular live oak trees, they're part of the mature tree in your photo. These root sprouts happen to a small, but significant percentage of live oak seedlings. Sometimes they begin sprouting almost as soon as the tree is 6 to 8 inches in diameter. Other times, trees don't develop the sprouts until they develop some calamity such as the great freeze of February 2021. It did so much damage to many of our state's live oaks, that many sent up root sprouts as the mother trees themselves began to decline.
In most cases you don't want these sprouts to remain. It's best to use a sharpshooter spade angled into moist soil to sever them. However, after they gain some size and maturity on their own you may have to cut them with a handsaw or axe. Before you do that, however, be sure the mother tree is completely healthy and vigorous.
Q: My daughter's bottlebrush tree has not bloomed since that bad cold spell four years ago. It is growing well. Just not blooming. Does it need fertilizer or anything else special, or will it just need time?
A: It needs time. Sub-tropical plants such as bottlebrush, loquats, figs, oleanders and pomegranates, don't always flower their first years after hard freezes and dieback. She should apply a standard lawn and landscape fertilizer that's high in nitrogen to encourage good growth this year. Surely by next year it will start to throw out blooms again.
