New to Forum & Anthracnose Question

Hi All!
I'm relatively new to DG and have been primarily hanging out in the poultry section (hence the odd alias), but love gardening as well. It was great to see a PNW Gardening forum, that way we can all be going through similar things at similar times! Love it!

I do have a question about Anthracnose, if anyone has any experience with this... I have Maple that was plant 4 or so years ago and the last two years its had Anthracnose. I've sprayed multiple times each of these years, but am wondering if there are other preventative measures to be taken for next season?

Thanks and I'm looking forward to getting to know some of you!
Kristin

Kristin - let me be the first to say welcome to the forum. It's a great group here. And several of us are down your way.

I don't know much about anthracnose at all. Hopefully someone with more experience will be able to help you out.

Kathy

Kristin, I will be the Second to welcome you to PNW . And I like Kathy have Know clue as to what that is. I have some very large oldfashion maples, trunks are over 5' or more. I also have a Jap. VineMaple, And another Can't Remember what it is. What type are we talking about ?
And what is Anthracnose, what does it do to them?

We want to know LOL
Tills

As far as I know, spraying is the only thing you can do. When you prune it, do not put the clippings on your compost pile. Burn or take them to the dump. Same with leaves that fall in the autumn. Keep the area around the tree cleaned up.

We have it on some of our apples.

Gwen

I know nothing about anthracnose, but sure do want to welcome you to the PNW forum!

It's hard to control that one and this year may have been worse than usual due to our cold, wet spring and the delay in the warm summer weather as well. Generally, since this is a fungus, good horticultural methods are the best control including cleaning up the fallen leaves and pruning out any seriously infected branches. Anthracnose is species specific, so you don't need to worry that what is effecting that particular tree will jump to other trees unless they are the same kind. If you are familiar with controlling leaf spot and powdery mildew on roses, it's the same kind of thing on the tree. It's unlikely to hurt the tree much unless it's really bad and causes mass defoliation, but it does look nasty. You don't want to add those leaves to your compost pile, either.

Early in the spring, just as the tree is budding out, begin spraying with a copper sulfate solution or a fungicide spray. This will not cure the problem, but will keep the spores from germinating. You'll have to spray about every week for the entire season if there is any sign of the disease. You'll also want to make sure the tree gets enough water and if the tree has been weakened by the disease, give it a well balanced fertilizer in the spring.

In addition, I seriously recommend you spray with a product called 'Messenger'. This is a natural product that stimulates the plant's immune system to fend off attacks from just about anything. It is an excellent product. Begin spraying with this when the tree is just budding out and spray about every 5 weeks during the growing season. You'll probably see a real difference in the health of the tree. This product really helped control the anthracnose on my native dogwood tree. It looked great this year!

Maybe we'll have a nice sunny spring and early summer next year and this will be less of a problem! We deserve it after two years of misery.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys and gals! I appreciate it! I've been spraying, but will also look into the brand Pixydish recommends.

Katie59,
Just in case you were curious, the Anthracnose is a spotting (fungus is the cause) of leaves. It can effect a number of different plants, but mine is an October Glory Maple. I'm not sure how else to describe it, its not a Japanese or a Vine, its just a standard maple tree.
The last two years the Anthracnose starts out on my tree with the first buds, it stunts the growth of the seed pods and then starts on the leaves. The leaves have brown spotting and veining through them and then the leaves droop like the tree needs water. I don't think its fatal, but its very unsightly and is really hard to manage. I have rocks below the tree and its hard to pick all of the fallen leaves out and make sure they are not around for future contamination.
I don't think that its contagious from plant to plant, but I have numerous plants with some sort of mildew problem... roses with black spot, maple with anthracnose, dogwood with something similar to anthracnose, and a honeysuckle with powdery mildew. *UGH!*

Thanks for the info, LL. It sounds like you're getting hit pretty hard. How frustrating!!

I am familiar with the disease, just have never encountered it myself so I had no idea how you'd treat it. Of course, if I had encountered it and treated, I probably still wouldn't remember what I'd done if it was longer than 10 minutes ago. :-/

I'd highly recommend the Messenger. I don't use it much, but when I have, I've had great success.

Also, the recommendations I've heard to avoid powdery mildew (I didn't realize the two were related) are to water more systematically in the summer. Regular watering (with good drainage, of course) seems to reduce plant stress and gives them much more of a fighting chance. Counter-intuitive, I know. Red maples like a lot of water, though. So that may help on two counts.

A lot of native dogwoods are susceptible to this, as well. http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/lpro003/lpro003.htm

Good luck and keep us posted.