Spruce Tree Diseases that Can Destroy Your Landscaping

Keeping your spruce trees happy and healthy is really not difficult to do unless your spruce tree contracts a harmful disease. When this happens your beautiful spruce tree can rust, its needles can fall off and it can die. The two most common diseases that impact the health of spruce trees is Rhizophaera needlecast and cytospora canker disease. Learning how to treat each of these diseases can help you to ensure that your spruce trees will survive their infections.

Rhizophaera Needlecast

The most dangerous of the two spruce tree diseases is rhizophaera needlecast. This disease has the potential to kill your spruce tree. It is a fungal infection that develops first in the interior of your tree and then spreads out to the branches. What makes this disease difficult to manage is that a tree will have the disease for well over a year before it will display any symptoms. At this point quick treatment is the only way to save your spruce tree from death.

The symptoms of this disease are going to manifest slowly at first. You will notice that the needles that are near the trunk of the tree are rusting and falling off of the branches. As the disease progresses the needles farther away from the trunk will be impacted and will die and fall off. You may also notice pycnidia, which is the black fruit of the fungus forming on the needles at the sites of its breathing pours called stomates.

It is important to treat your spruce tree immediately once you notice the symptoms of the disease. Pruning may seem like the most logical treatment, but it is not since the disease is really headquartered inside the tree's trunk. The best treatment is to use a common fungicide like Daconil Weatherstik. This fungicide can be mixed at a ratio of 1.5 teaspoons per gallon. You will want to apply this treatment to all affected branches and to the branches that are found around the affected branch. The first treatment will be given when the new growth is slightly less than one inch. The second treatment will be given a couple of weeks later. You will need to repeat the fungicide treatment the following two years.

Cytospora Canker Disease

The second disease that a spruce tree can contract is called cytospora canker disease. This disease is also a fungal infection. However, instead of starting in the trunk of the tree this disease starts on the branches. It creates a canker with dams up the vessels in the branch that carry water and nutrients to the tree's extremities. When this happens the branch dies from the outside tip inward. If left untreated the disease can lead to the death of the branch.

Treatment for this disease is the opposite of the treatment for the other disease mentioned. Cytospora canker disease will not respond to fungicide treatments, but it will respond to pruning. When pruning the diseased branches try not to drag the infected branch over the healthy branches as this can spread the disease. It will be important to aggressively prune any branches that appear to be infected. This will help protect the overall health of your spruce tree.