Hi all,
I have a young (air layered last year) Malta Black fig with some weird looking mottled/speckled leaves on it (see photos). Most leaves on the tree (maybe a dozen) show no signs, but there are ~5 that do have signs of it. We’ve had a sort of cold start to the spring, with heavy rain off and on and night time temps (northern Mass.) down in the upper 40’s/low 50’s. Pollen has been crazy the past two weeks as well, leaving a lot of pollen on the leaves. It’s in some old MG potting soil, and I’ve added a very small amount of lime and fertilizer this spring. I have two other more mature trees next to it with no signs.
Any thoughts on whether it’s FMV? Nutrient deficiency?
To be precise I think that is mosaic, deformity, and some chlorosis, hard to tell from the pic but mottling has raised bumps. FMV symptoms are often only on some branches like you say so I’d say that is FMV (although no-one can know for certain without a lab test).
Fig bud mites symptoms are easy to mistake for FMV but would most likely show up on the other branches and trees sooner or later… It is a good idea to look for them with a microscope to rule them out, since they are the only natural vector of FMV and may not cause any symptoms until their population increases in summer, and their symptoms can be masked by FMV. They are often overlooked and difficult to deal with so unfortunately there is a high risk of getting them along with new plants and cuttings.
Nutrient deficiencies are something else altogether, FMV vaguely resembles K deficiency but you’d expect that to show on all growths and not affect any of the newest leaves. Increasing the growth rate is known to reduce symptoms so hard pruning (dormant is best for the plant) along with good growing conditions can help. Propagating from the healthiest growths will often produce some symptom free plants.
Lol, i didn’t listen to the show yet. Don has read other questions from me before. He knows his stuff, and is a good resource. I like to hear some of the older guys on gardening shows, as they have done it all, and have a lot to share. I also lids5ten to the BBC Gardner’s Question Time. As the approach there is so different. I like interviews with garden authors and related and Margaret Roach does a lot of those type shows on “A Way To Garden” Lot’s of interesting stuff out there.
Thanks! I’m also seeing a few young leaves with some heavy texturing on them, which may be a result of more stress. Like I said it’s been swinging between cold/wet and hot/dry here the past 6 weeks, so the conditions have been weird.
If chlorotic spots show up on that new leaf you probably have the mites, you said only 5 leaves have symptoms but aside from that last picture (those bumps there are normal, btw) every leaf I can see has some symptoms.
It will never get better if there are mites… I think Drew just got his first mites this year, he is lucky people like me helped him to get a good clean start so it is all sunshine and rainbows
It’s definitely not present on all leaves - I’m only showing pictures of leaves that have symptoms right now. I’ll keep an eye out for the mites. I’m planning on a neem oil treatment today, but I’m looking into spinosad as an option.
Neem will not have much effect on fig bud mites, they are small enough that contact insecticides can’t get to them. Spinosad does control them but might not eradicate them, I use spiromesifen which kills all life stages and provides residual control.
I have a 40x lighted handheld microscope, it was less than $20. They are still pretty hard to see even with a scope unless there is an infestation, so I’d look first and then start spraying if you see them and then you will also be able to judge how well the sprays are working.
I think the post harvest interval for spinosad is only one day.
I thought of something today… If you had the plant over winter and it was exposed to freezing temperatures that should have killed any mites. Nobody knows how much cold it takes but they are not supposed to survive winter outside north of Florida/Louisiana.
I actually kept it in my garage over winter, but we got extremely cold in early January, and the air and soil temperature went below freezing for several days. So maybe that should have killed them off? The only thing that’s been added since then is that this spring I bought an unk Teramo, which is in a tree pot about 20 ft away from this one. It’s not showing any symptoms.
I’d focus on keeping it growing well and watch it and the others for now, or if spraying spinosad will help you feel better it won’t hurt to spray all of them. I didn’t add any new varieties this year but have still looked at a dozen suspicious leaves with the microscope so far, aphids and other insects that feed on young leaves cause damage looks similar, and the mites can also cause browning of the leaf hairs but that can also just be a mild sunburn.
The thing about the mites is they sneak in and can go unnoticed and then when hot dry weather arrives the population will explode, but if one pregnant female survives there can be just as many as there were in a couple of weeks because their life cycle is like 5 days.
