Most of my young apple trees in one row of my orchard have had their leaves turn brown. Any idea what’s going on? Can insects do this? Some of the leaves are bound up with some kind of fine webbing.
Located in NE Kansas.
I was going to say spider mites. But the damage is too random for them. The pattern of damage and webbing would say some kind of webworm to me. The larvae matured and have left. You are left with some ugly looking trees. But probably little or no lasting damage. Next year if you can spot them earlier, they can be controlled perhaps with some kind of BT product. If not that, many insecticides usually work.
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Local people I’ve asked are saying spider mites. The hot dry weather evidently encourages them. I’ll have to get my magnifying glass out to see if I can actually see them…
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Probably heat stress as well. I had a tree do the same thing over the last couple of weeks which I felt was out of the blue. I am located in the same area as you. I haven’t examined the tree closely yet. Mine was planted this Spring and looked perfectly fine up until recently.
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Yeah, I’m sure the heat doesn’t help. Fortunately, the other rows seemed unbothered (by either heat or spider mites).
The default spray for most trees is neem oil, even if you are not treating particular bug. An early in the year it will kill overwintering eggs which can stop infestations before they even happen. Being an organic oil you can spray it at any other time without risking a toxic mess in your food; most insecticides have stringent timelines and even then they can make your fruit suspect.
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Spider mites don’t occur on sporadic trees. If that were the issue most likely all trees would be affected. They also don’t occur in patches on an individual tree like that. What is often patchy and on just a few trees are webworms.
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