It wasn’t dry. I didn’t squeeze it hard enough to get juice. I’ll have more. If they’re bad I’ll take pictures.
You do not have to squeeze it to get juice…just touch it and it’s all over you… I do hope your next one is better!!!
should get better next year, or the following. Duds are the norm for younger nigras.
truly worthy of consideration when isolating good nigra berries
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Well…it’s starting…
Just over the last day or two. There is also another browning pattern that I had noticed but I felt like it was trauma. It’s now over a lot of leaves and that has happened in the last day.
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Sorry Katie… I really don’t know what to tell you at this juncture. A little bit of fungal leaf spot is normal with wet weather, but…I also can’t say whether it will take over and put your plant in decline if you do nothing. If you want to take proactive measures, I would suggest you try “Serenade”. It is a biological control using a strain of bacillus subtilus. Bacillus subtilus is harmless to insects, animals, or people. I eat some almost every day in the form of natto; which is beans that are inoculated with bacillus subtilus and incubated for 24 hours. I mentioned in a post that I was using Captan. I am using Captan because it only works on funguses and I am trying to isolate the main disease that makes life difficult for Morus nigra. If my nigra still dies after keeping the fungal leaf spot in check, then I’ll suspect other agents. ‘Serenade’ works on both fungal and bacterial diseases.
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the lesions dont look deadly, but really hard to say, since your climate and native microbes/fungi are different from what have here.
our nigra leaves yellowed out and some got spotty as well here, but seemingly due to the recent 117F spell. I am still waiting for some new growth from current dormant buds, and hopefully our nigras(and yours’) new growth from remaining buds will be fine.
i see the buds of your specimen are plump and seem at the brink of new growth.
if new growth yellows out or get spotty, then it might be a problem.
but if yours survives current symptoms and survives your winter, and then leafs out healthily next year, then it may just be a transient but unavoidable occurrence in your area every summer
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We’ve been rainier than normal but it’s getting hot now. About this time we start getting a lot drier and that might help. The rapid change though is a bit worrisome and the two different patterns of brown. I had two more fruits. One is red and the other one was turning. It dropped the ripest one…I found it on the ground. I’m going to get some of the serenade as Mark suggested and give that a go. It doesn’t look like it’s knocking on deaths door but it has been a dramatic change in two days time…
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It’s still putting out a lot of new growth. I’m amazed at how much it has grown when everyone says how slowly growth comes.
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do keep us posted, and good luck!
that is good to know. More growth means more buds. If the existing foliage are damaged, there is always possibility that the leaves within the nodes are safe and sound.
btw, has it grown > than a foot tall and wide?
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I think it might be a foot in height. I was thinking 8-9 inches a few weeks ago and it’s more now. It seems to lignify quickly but if I’m seeing where the vertical growth bud started then it’s very close to a foot in height. These photos are from approx same angle and are April 20 and June 25.
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Nice progress @k8tpayaso! 8-9" of overall growth is probably the max that we have here for nigras, whereas many mulbs we’ve grown may attain 7 feet tall in one summer, from spindly sticks bare-root at less than a foot tall
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Update: @Livinginawe I managed to order some Serenade and apply it (a bit less than what I would call aesthetically acceptable to ingest…
) and gave it a good soaking. It doesn’t look any worse but I think whatever is causing the second pattern in the above pictures is being more aggressive than just the brown dots that looks like your fungal pictures. A few of the new leaves had been affected. I pulled off a some of the badly scarred leaves. Just wondered if that might decrease the bio load?
@jujubemulberry I’m guesstimating ~15 inches on main stem and ~4-12 inches on other branches. Not all stems are growing aggressively. Most of the new growth is on the side that had the least foliage (looked as if it had been crowded on that side). Only one branch of the new growth has brown on it.
All that being said we had a non forecasted storm come in that dropped three inches of rain two days ago and another one this morning that soaked it again! So much for getting drier…I never thought I would regret July rain!
Happy Fourth!
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Once the fungus gets into the leaf (spores enter through stomata) sprays don’t do much to halt their progression on that leaf. Serenade works by stopping spores from developing, so it is mainly effective on preventing spores from taking a hold on unaffected leaves. Sulfur sprays are touted as being more effective against fungus, but do nothing for bacterial diseases (Serenade attacks both).
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good for you! Impossible where am at! And i see the internodes are quite short, which is a signifies ‘seasoned’ wood.
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New growth attacked. Older leaves seem to be holding pretty good but at least two branches of new growth are badly affected and the “older new growth” (not the new leaflets) on the growing branches are getting the brundt of this. Rained again today—nearly 6 inches monthly total for July and average precipitation is 3.5 for July. IF it lives through this year it might make it…
How often should I spray?
Katy
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oh no! Hoping it survives the onslaught…
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First of all…Excellent photos!
Now for the bad news…These latest pics seem to be more indicative of bacterial leaf spot. It could be you have both bacterial and fungal. Fungal is usually the most prevalent by far, but the appearance of lesions on young leaves just out of the womb leads me to believe that bacterial leaf spot is to blame. Bacteria leaf spot disease can enter through leaf stomata, but it also enters through the soil and infects the whole plant (hence its appearance on such young leaves) and often kills the plant slowly over time. There appears to be pink ooze in a black lesion in the third photo (near the top of the photo). I don’t believe that fungal leaf spot disease has such a discharge. Can you detect a foul odor? Only bacterial leaf spots have a smell.
I would beseech you to contact your county agricultural extension and send them your photos. And maybe you could persuade them to do a laboratory determination of the disease. If that approach proves futile, I would love to obtain a leaf to examine microscopically.
Although I don’t recommend you going to such lengths, bacterial leaf spot is controlled only with antibiotics like Streptomycin (sorry, Serenade just isn’t potent enough). I’m sorry if I might have led you down the wrong path, but your initial pictures looked very fungal like. But if it is fungal…You had asked how often should you spray…After a rain event, and every week in humid weather, is a good measure.
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So, firstly I’m sure my ag agent is a useless endeavor. This is cow and hay country and if you’re not doing cow and hay then you you don’t have much hope of other knowledge…especially with an out of zone plant. Secondly will it make a difference if I find the stuff to spray it with? Thirdly, will all my other trees get this? I’m short on time atm so I’ll get back to you in a bit. Thanks for the input…that’s all the questions I can think of currently.
Katy
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