Hello,
we just moved to a new home, and we have 3 dogwood trees in our yard. They all don't look healthy though. Their leaves look like the one in the picture, does anybody know what I should do with them? Do they have some kind of disease ?
Thanks a lot.
You Dog Woods don't look too good for sure, cant say what they have wrong, maybe just neglect by the previous owners, but they do look sad, I would give them a good prune, burn all the cut off shoots as they may well have some form of disease and you don't want it to spread around, also give them a good drink/feed and perhaps some thick mulch around the root system to help conserve some moisture, SO if they give out some new shoots/leaves that are fresh and green, do remember that some dog woods like to be cut hard back each year so they throw out fresh new growth come spring, some need this to send out the coloured branches everyone loves, some are grown for the foliage and flowers, so without being able to identify the kind you have, it will be hard to advice you on what treatment they need as far as yearly pruning they require if any, but for now, give the treatment I said at the beginning as they are too leggy and are suffering from neglect for now, they need time to form new growth and watering, cutting back and feeding will help them till you can identify the type they are. good luck. Weenel.
Thank you so much, I'll try to do that as soon as possible. Is it ok to prune them in the summer ?
If there are diseased branches, it's generally best to prune those out as soon as you can even if it's not quite the right time of year.
Ok, I'll do it tomorrow then, thanks a lot everybody.
it's called leaf spot. it's a fungus like blackspot is to roses. probably got this spring when the weather was cool and moist. nothing to do now. leaves are already infected. it will be ok. i wouldn't do anything. let the plant do it's thing. leaf spot is not fatal.
If it's just leaf spot then there's no need to prune branches off because of that (although if the plant is overgrown and leggy, then you can still prune to help with that). Best thing to do with leafspot is make sure you rake up and remove all the infected leaves when they fall, that will help make it harder for it to come back next year.
