The first step in figuring out if what you are seeing on your plant is normal growth or damage is to first identify the plant. Once you have identified the plant, research examples of normal growth habit as well as familiarize yourself with the common traits of the plant. Most damage that occurs on plants is very obvious, but sometimes can be tricky to identify the cause if there are no signs or symptoms present. The areas to check would be leaves, buds, branches, trunk, and roots. If you see anything that may look abnormal or maybe you’re just unsure of what you’re seeing give us a call today!

Nothing is required from you prior to a site visit, but there are a few things that would be useful to know or have on hand. Firstly, when the plant was originally planted? Have you applied any amendments to the soil? If so, do you have a picture of the label? How frequently do you water? Has there been any construction nearby recently? When did you notice the decline or damage? Have you had your soil tested? If not, you can have your soil tested through MSU or we can handle this for you.

Generally, not much is required of the homeowner before a treatment. The only thing we ask is you water the plant thoroughly the night before and leave us access to your water in case we need it. Depending on the treatment we may reach out to your neighbors a few days before to notify them of what we will be applying, when we will be applying and when application is over.

We will figure this out during the site visit, however, a general rule of thumb is if the plant has lost 50% of its canopy or more it is unlikely any chemical amendment will be able to bring the plant back to health.

The term acceptable level of damage comes from integrated pest management strategies. This is a threshold level for determining when to take action or when to treat a pest. Some pests may cause minor or only aesthetic damage and to spray with a pesticide to control these pests may cause more harm than good. The idea behind acceptable level of damage is imagine you have a forest of 100 trees, if one tree becomes diseased or preyed on by insects that may not require you to act, but if 50 of your 100 trees became infected that may be unacceptable. So somewhere between 1 and 50 lies the acceptable level of damage. We will work with you to develop what this is for your specific needs and when we reach that threshold we would implement or plan to control that pest.

The best time to fertilize is highly dependent on two things, the type of plant you are growing and more importantly what is already in the soil. The nutrient requirements of plants can vary greatly not only between families but also on the species level. Understanding what plant you have and its requirements is the first step to creating a fertilizer plan. The second is understanding the soil. All to frequently people buy into the marketing that their lawn needs fertilized every year or their garden needs a boost and in most cases this isn’t true. We find that often times people or companies who push fertilizer heavily havent done the due diligence of testing the soil first. The soil may not be deficient at all, but rather it could be a pH issue, or an overwatering issue, or even a toxic gas leak; who is to say unless you have the soil tested. Over-application of fertilizer is a very common cause of premature death in plants. Often times the plant will get used to being fertilized and burn through the nutrients quickly outgrowing the area and then starving. Science has also shown that high nitrogen content fertilizers when not needed can cause more prolific but weaker cell growth which makes them easier for fungi and insects to break down and kill. Generally, the best time to apply fertilizer if it is needed is either early spring when the cells in the plants are most active and can uptake the nutrients quicker, or later in the fall so as the seasons progress the natural weathering process can break down some of the fertilizer into the soil so it is bioavailable for the plant roots in the spring.

This is generally pest dependent and is determined by the life stage of the pest to be treated. Some insect pests are best treated in the spring before they emerge from the soil, others in the fall after they have mated. After we determine what the pest problem you are facing, we will come up with a schedule based on local weather data to help develop a timeline for treatment.

There are many good books and websites available to help you broaden your knowledge about plants and related pests. I will link a few of the best below:

Plant Identification-Inaturalist

MSU County Extension

University of Wisconsin

University of Minnesota

Washington State University

Marquette County Conservation District