Yes, you read that correctly. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, I’m so angry I can barely type. Yes, this is absolutely unimaginable.
For folks that are new: Last year my neighbor carelessly let 2, 4-D spray drift onto my fruit trees and killed around 19 trees and really messed up about 15 more, several of which still aren’t normal. That saga is in a thread called “my very strange pears” because when it first happened I didn’t know what was causing my pears to have strange twisted growth.
Well, here we are a year later and the nighmare begins again. SO today I’m in my orchard and I notice that the field next to me has just barely started to turn a yellowish brown color. It suddenly dawns on me that it has all been sprayed with a herbicide. This time it wasn’t just a broadleaf killer but some kind of total-kill spray like Roundup. The damage to the trees is totally different this time
Keep in mind that even the field they sprayed has just barely started to show the results of the spray, so I’m certain my trees are also in the very, very, very early stage of damage and death. No telling how many are really affected. So when you look at these photos you will probably say “well, that isn’t bad” or you may question if the damage is even caused by herbicide spray. I assure you 100% that what I’m showing you is damage caused by the spray. The damage just showed up, is much worse the closer you get to the field that was sprayed, and while some damage looks similar to other things, much of it could be explained no other way.
I haven’t even begun to think about what I’m going to do, whether the same people are farming it this year, or anything else. I just discovered I’d been hit again and wanted to share it with the only folks who really understand how much it hurts to raise trees for 5 years and have a careless neighbor kill them over and over again.
This is a brand new Bevay Green Gage from Dave Wilson. It was just leafing out and was a picture of health and bright green color just 3 days ago. Now it has little black dots all over it where droplets landed and the tips are already dead and brown. Photos don’t show how bad it is.
The photo below isn’t that helpful to you in showing how bad the trees look, but I wanted to you see how all the green leaves on about 10 of my trees are falling off. We have had no wind or any other reason why my trees would suddenly start shedding all their leaves at once. This photos shows that they aren’t even hanging on long enough to turn yellow- just falling off by the hundreds. Trees will be completely bare in another day or two
This is just a random branch off my blue Damson Plum tree. Again, it looked magnificent and lush green 3 days ago and all its tips were healthy new grown. Now they are all dying and brown and burned.
This photo is almost useless at showing the damage, but what you see is a paw paw tree that has been hit worse than almost anything else. The whole tree has just wilted- it literally looks like a potted tree that hasn’t been watered in many days…no vigor, no structure. And like every single tree affected, there are tiny black dots covering almost every leaf- very obviously where tiny droplets landed.
The pic below is just another random branch on a different tree. Once again, tiny black dots everywhere and brown, crispy dead edges.
The most horrifying part of all this is that we all know how long Roundup takes and that the first stages start like what I’m saying and it gets worse every day for a week or two until the plant is dead. I can only hope that isn’t what is going to happen to all these trees again, but I honestly bet it will be. Best case scenario it looks like they are going to loose all their leaves and I’ll loose another year of growing time that my 4-5 year old trees really need.
Does this make anyone else mad?