Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County

Helping Gardeners Put Knowledge to Work

We are community volunteers. Our mission is to support, teach and encourage a diverse community of gardeners using current research-based horticulture practices. We invite you to explore our website and over 300 blog posts about gardening in Western North Carolina. Learn more

A Gardening Guide for Our Mountains: The Perfect Holiday Stocking Stuffer

Living in Western North Carolina means that there is always something to do in the garden, from preparing soil and pruning to fertilizing and transplanting. But when and how? You’ll find the answers in A Gardening Guide for Our Mountains.

A Gardening Guide for Our MountainsCreated by Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM (BCEMG) volunteers, the guide provides a complete month-by-month description of what to do (and not to do), along with tips on invasive species, mulching, composting, and creating bird- and pollinator-friendly habitats.

This quick reference makes the perfect holiday gift for the gardeners in your life, whether they are old hands, new to gardening, or new to gardening in the mountains. A Gardening Guide for Our Mountains will get them off to the right start and keep their gardens growing all year long. Plus, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that funds raised through this publication go to support the many educational and outreach programs provided by BCEMG volunteers.

Price: $10. Cash or check only. Please make checks payable to Buncombe County Extension Master Gardener. Shipping is available for an additional $2.

How to order: Garden guides can be purchased and picked up at the Cooperative Extension Office, 49 Mount Carmel Road, Asheville, N.C. Or call 828-255-5522 to order by phone and request shipping.

Please note: Garden guides that require shipping will not ship until payment of $12 is received. Please send all payments to Cooperative Extension, 49 Mount Carmel Road, Asheville, N.C. 28806, ATTN: Buncombe County Master Gardener.

To learn more about the Buncombe County Master Gardener program, go to: https://buncombe.ces.ncsu.edu/aboutourlawngardenprograms-buncombecounty/buncombecountymastergardenervolunteers/ 

Pest Facts: Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA)

Just visit a Western North Carolina forest to see how much destruction this non-native invasive insect pest has caused—and is still causing—on the native Carolina hemlocks (Tsuga caroliniana) and Eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis)! After our recent rains, this is a good time to treat your hemlocks if you see a white cottony substance on your hemlocks.

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

History

  • HWAs were discovered in Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia in 1988, likely when crawlers clung to the legs and feathers of migrating birds, such as the black-throated green warbler and solitary vireo that visit or nest in hemlock trees.
  • HWAs were discovered on hemlocks in North and South Carolina in late 2001 and early 2002.

HWA (Adelges tsugae) Life Cycle:

  • HWAs hatch from eggs and then go through a crawler stage—almost invisible to the naked eye. These crawlers cannot fly on their own but can drift in the air from tree to tree, and cling to the legs and feathers of migrating birds.
  • After settling on host trees, the HWAs insert a bundle of mouthparts at the base of a needle and spend the rest of their lives—a few months—sucking nutrients out of the tree.
  • The name “woolly” comes from the fact that adult HWAs are covered with a protective white fluff once they settle.
  • The HWA goes through two generations a year (one in March and one in October in Western North Carolina) and each female—even without being fertilized by a male—can lay between 100 to 300 eggs.
  • This reproductive process is called “parthenogenesis”—the offspring are genetically identical clones of their mother.

Controls

Chemical: Registered pesticides containing imidacloprid or dinotefuran are the most effective chemical treatments for control of HWAs. These are applied as a soil injection or trunk spray. These insecticides are water soluble and move into the tree’s vascular system along with water. Dinotefuran has a faster uptake, but imidacloprid has a longer residual protection. Control of HWAs using imidacloprid can last for 4-5 years. Dinotefuran may require retreatment within 2 years.

Biological:

The species that has so far shown the most promise as a biological control agent is Laricobius nigrinus, a predator beetle native to the Pacific Northwest. L. nigrinus is active from October to March; both adults and larvae will consume all stages of HWAs: eggs, nymphs and adults.

After exhaustive evaluation in quarantine labs, it was cleared by the USDA for use as an HWA biocontrol in the eastern United States in 2000 and has been released in NC since 2003.

Original Article by Glenn Palmer, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer, Revised by Bob Wardwell, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

Hemlock Restoration Initiative https://savehemlocksnc.org/

National Park Service Great Smoky Mountains Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/hemlock-woolly-adelgid.htm

University of Massachusetts HWA Fact Sheet https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/hemlock-woolly-adelgid

Kids Post: What is chewing the trees?

In fall we watch for tree leaves to turn pretty colors—but before they turn you may see that a lot of those leaves are being chewed up! What eats tree leaves?

Leaf chewers

Although many people call leaf chewers “worms,” most aren’t worms at all! They are the early stages—called larvae—of a variety of insects.

Caterpillars are larvae that grow up to be butterflies or moths. Although many caterpillars eat plants such as milkweeds or members of the carrot family—including parsley and dill—some prefer trees!

  • Inchworms (fall cankerworms) are fun to watch because they move by inching along, but they can do lots of leaf damage to many of our most popular trees, including maples, oaks, beeches, and hickories. The adults are gray moths; the males have wings, but the females are wingless!
  • Inchworm

    Fall cankerworm wingless female moth
  • Catalpa worms can eat most all the leaves off catalpa trees during the summer—they become sphinx moths!
  • Catalpa worm

    Catalpa worm damage
  • Orangestriped oakworms strip leaves from many types of oak trees as fall approaches—they become orange moths with a white spot on each wing.

  • Orange striped oakworm
  • Fall webworms are another moth caterpillar whose larvae eat the leaves of many trees— birches, cherries, crabapples, hickories, sourwoods, and walnuts—they live inside a web until they are ready to form a cocoon to become a fluffy white moth next spring.

  • Fall Webworm (Hyphantria cunea)_James Emery_CC BY 2.0_Flickr
    Fall webworms

Sawfly larvae grow up to be sawflies—they are small flying insects that lives such short lives that you may never see the adults—or mistake them for wasps if you do! The good news is they cannot sting. Their larvae can do a lot of damage to trees and shrubs, though. Dogwood sawfly larvae may “skeletonize” the leaves of many types of dogwoods, leaving just the leaf veins!

Dogwood sawfly larvae
Dogwood sawfly larvae damage

What can you do about leaf chewers?

Birds and predatory insects feed on these critters, helping manage the damage! Also, most of these leaf chewers do their eating late enough in the year that the trees will soon drop their leaves anyway, so most don’t suffer any serious harm.

  • Catalpa worms eat a bit earlier in the summer, though, and if you love to fish, you can help save tree leaves by collecting these chewers to use as bait!
  • You can stop fall webworm damage by disturbing the web—get an adult to help you cut off any of the webbed areas, use a stick to tear up the web, or use a strong stream of water from a garden hose to bust up the web!
  • Some years fall cankerworms can eat almost all the tree leaves, producing a lot of droppings— their swinging down on spiderweb-like strands bothers some people, too! You can ask an adult to help you trap the new female moths as they crawl up the trees later this fall, once the leaves have dropped and we’ve had a freeze. The City of Charlotte has instructions for how to make sticky band traps: https://charlottenc.gov/Engineering/LandscapeManagement/Trees/Documents/CankerwormBrochure2017.pdf#search=fall%20cankerworm

Article by Debbie Green, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

 For More Information:

Inchworms (fall cankerworm):

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/fall-cankerworm

Catalpa worms:

http://capitalnaturalist.blogspot.com/2015/07/catalpa-sphinx-moth-caterpillars.html

Orangestriped oakworms:

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/orangestriped-oakworm

Fall webworms:

https://www.buncombemastergardener.org/tag/fall-webworms/

Dogwood sawfly:

https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/2009/8-12/sawfly.html

 

 

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Buncombe County Extension Office
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Helpline 828-255-5522

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