Need help with Birch Trees.

The two Birch Trees were already here when we bought the house. At the time they were about 7 years old and now they seem to be full grown about 40 feet or slightly more. I wanted to have a shade garden under the trees and found out the roots are very invasive. I found out the trees are suppose to bloom and they never have. I find holes in the leaves. These are beautiful trees but as time goes on the problems get bigger. I have no money to take them out. No money to get them sprayed. And it would take years and years to grow another tree anyway. This is the only shade I have and I am growing sick.

Here are the trees.

I've had terrible problems with scale on my roses so this year I tried a product put out by Bayer. It's a three-in-one systemic liquid feed that has fertilizer, insecticide, and disease control. It worked great. My roses and other shrubs I used it on grew and bloomed real well, the scale all died and I haven't had any problems with black spot. It seems expensive but when you consider that you're actually getting three products in one it's not bad and it does work. They have one for trees too that I plan to try next spring (I prefer to put it out in spring when we get better rain to help wash it into the ground). I'm sure it's sold in many places but I found it at Lowe's.

Yes, I tried the Bayer 3n1 on my climbing rose vine and it seemed to do nothing. It might be old, I forgot I had it. At first I was applying it wrong. But I will try the kind for trees, if you think it might be scale. I dropped off a sample at the Va.corp ext. I was very concerned about the fact that they have never bloomed. I thought they might not be getting enough water. You are right about the price though if you went and bought all three it would probably cost you double what you pay for the 3n1 !

Are you sure they've never bloomed? Like many trees, their flowers don't look particularly "flowery" so you may have been expecting something different and not noticed them. Here are a couple pictures of what their flowers look like:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/157380/
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/157389/
(yours is likely a different species, but they'd all have similar looking flowers)

I've never seen anything like that before (link). Maybe something is eating the flower buds before it gets a chance to bloom?

This is a weeping river birch, this is a picture I found on Plantfiles.

virginiarose,
Sorry for the misunderstanding--I don't think your problem is scale as you would clearly see those. It could be any number of insects or perhaps a disease which is why I suggested the Bayer product. It covers a good range of insects and diseases.

OH, good. How do you apply it. Like you would fertilizer? Did I tell you I dropped off a sample at the Va. coop. extension . Hope they can give me some clues.

The instruction in the pamphlet attached to the container explains what strength you need to mix it depending on what type of plants you are treating. After it's mixed, it tells you to pour it around the base of the plant. Just for a little added insurance, after I did that I watered each plant to ensure that the mixture got down to the roots. I hope it helps your plants as much as it did mine. BTW, you mentioned that the Bayer you had might be old and that is a possibility. About three years ago hubby bought some weed killer from a big box store and it had to be old. He used it to spray the grass growing down the middle of our gravel driveway which is about 1/4 mile long. It didn't phase the grass at all and boy was he mad! Can't blame him--that was a lot of wasted work.

Well, I got a letter from the Va. Cooperative Extension today, they said it was nothing serious, no disease or bugs. I will get some Bayer anyway because if its not disease or bugs then it must be a minor fungus and maybe, I'm just hoping if I fertilize it and water it once in a while, maybe I will see some flowers next year, because they did not tell me why it didn't flower. May they are just small and I didn't notice.