Today  Appalachian Tree Service  was called out to look at a cherry tree that seemed to not be doing well and the homeowner was very concerned that they might lose the tree. Jesse Milton from  Onebark, LLC. was with me today to help in the diagnosis process.

The tree was a 14” Yoshino cherry and was severely stressed.  50% of the stems were dead (2 out of 4).   We identified ambrosia beetles in the trunk and possible evidence of Fire Blight. Infection was found (dead leaves, small splits in trunk around branch unions and lesion like bark splits along stems).  We made a small cut into an old pruning cut on a suspected dead stem and found that the cortex was not green.  There were brown leaves still attached to a few twigs and although it was tough to look for other symptoms of fire blight due to how dead the leaves were, we noted shepherd’s crook shape on the petioles.

Our recommendations:

1. Remove prune/remove the dead stems since the customer really wanted to keep the tree.

2. Water both trees with soaker hoses and use a pie pan to measure water application to accomplish 1” of water per week.

3. Mulch around the tree using wood chips

4.  We will apply a trunk wash of Bifenthrin 23.1%, per label instructions, to both trees, once per year.