Dear Neil: Our Shu-mard red oak has a dark streak on its trunk. Everything is dry, and it is not getting any larger. The tree appears healthy otherwise. Should I be concerned?

Answer: There has been an area of active de-cay here at some point in the recent past, but if it’s dry and not increasing in size, the tree is probably healing on its own. If you have a certified arborist who services your trees, this would be the time to have him or her check this tree out. Otherwise, just keep an eye on it for now.

Dear Neil: We have a re-tama tree on our property in South Texas. It blooms one time each spring, but not again. Other retamas down the street bloom for much longer periods of time. I think the winter a year ago hurt it. Could it still be recovering?

Answer: Perhaps. Or it may not be in soil that’s as good. There are lots of reasons a plant may not bloom as well or as long. Watch its growth the rest of this year and when its bloom come next year. Hopefully it will improve.

Dear Neil: We were out of the country for several weeks last fall. Our St. Au-gustine lawn looked bad when we came back, and it looked bad this spring in spite of fertilizing. It seems to be expanding. What can I do?

Answer: Your lawn was hit by take all root rot. It was very bad across big areas of Texas this spring and early summer. Infected lawns were very patchy with yellowed spots and dying grass. This was the disease for which we used to recom-mend applying a 1-inch layer of sphagnum peat moss until this year, but plant pathologists now recommend application of the fungicide Azoxystrob-in, and it did a great job of controlling it. Howev-er, TARR is a cool-season disease that should be in remission. Wait to treat until you see it again.

Dear Neil: There are three crape myrtles in our neighborhood that are partly white and partly pink. Are crape myrtles like hydrangeas, where adding acid to the soil will change the flower color?

Answer: Not at all. What you’re seeing are plants that are made up of distinct cuttings of different colors. Nurseries usually plant three cut-tings per pot when they’re starting their plants. Either those were inten-tionally done that way for effect or the same mistake was made three times. It’s usually not a good plan because they won’t bloom at the same time, and the different varieties may not grow at the same rate or in the same mature form.

Dear Neil: We have two fig trees that we planted three years ago. They have not produced figs this year. I cut one of them back last fall, and it has no

figs on it at all this year. The other plant has figs, but they are remaining hard and not maturing. What is wrong?

Answer: It’s best if you don’t prune figs. Pruning stimulates new vegetative growth at the expense of fruit. As for the fruit that is refusing to ripen, just wait. Keep the plant moist and be patient. It will rip-en in its own time.

Dear Neil: I have about a dozen large holes in my yard, perhaps the size of quarters. I did see one very large beetle, but I couldn’t get a photo of it. What can I do? They ap-peared very suddenly.

Answer: That’s normal. Beetles emerge from the soil after changing from their immature stage of be-ing grub worms. The grubs for these rhinoceros beetles and other large types are much larger than for the more common June bugs, but the good news is that they’re harmless to our plants. Cicada killers, the beneficial predatory wasp-like insects that paralyze and kill noisy cicadas, also emerge from ground holes. Don’t worry about any of this.

Dear Neil: I lost about half of my tomatoes this year. The fruit would look great, but when I picked them there would be a soft spot up on the shoulder. It would spread quickly until the entire fruit was ruined. There was no sign of any insect damage. What would that be?

Answer: I wish I had a photo. Since you said no insects, I’ll rule out stinkbug damage where they puncture the fruit. You say you don’t see any feeding, but the fruit does deteriorate. It could be sunscald. That happens with tomatoes that ripen in the hot weather. If you had told me the fruit had a putrid odor I would have said it was bacterial soft rot. I’d suggest looking at the information on Aggie Horticulture, the TAMU horticulture website. May-be you can match things up better with what you know you saw.

Dear Neil: My red oak is shedding its acorns. They’re about pea-sized. I’m hoping the tree is healthy. Should I do any-thing to help it?

Answer: No. Just sit tight. The tree probably just over-produced and is aborting to make up for it. Things should be fine.

— Have a question you’d like Neil to consider? Mail it to him in care of this newspaper or e-mail him at mailbag@sperrygardens.com. Neil regrets that he cannot reply to questions individually.

Red oak might be healing on its own

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Farm & GardenPAGE 2C / SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2019 news-journal.com

NEIL SPERRY

This Shumard red oak has an area of decay

on its trunk, but the tree might

be healing on its own.

Special to the News-Journal

BY ADRIAN HIGGINSThe Washington Post

As you dodge sunbeams on a hel-laciously hot and humid summer’s day, it’s worth remembering that you have a constant friend willing to take a photon to save you.

We refer of course to the humble tree, so seemingly passive and yet so instrumental in getting us through high summer. If its beauty were not enough, or its ability to mitigate greenhouse gases, the shade the tree provides is a real measure of relief from excessive summer heat. It can feel 15 degrees cooler beneath an old oak or maple, and a stand of them can create their own breeze as they forge their own microclimate.

In an age of universal air condi-tioning, the sheltering value of a tree has become less obvious, along with the unperceived phenomena that allow it to ride out the heat wave in a way that we could not. Our forebears understood the value of getting to leafier, higher ground, even before expanses of asphalt and concrete cre-ated the heat islands of the modern city.

Hot streetsChip Tynan, horticulturist at the

Missouri Botanical Garden, said once-leafy boulevards in St. Louis have had their trees removed in advance of their slow death by the emerald ash borer. “It has created a whole lot of very hot streets,” he said.

Trees are, among other things, great columns of water, drawing moisture from the soil and exhaling it through the leaves. It has been estimated that a single apple orchard can lift 16 tons of water a day.

This is not to say that trees are not stressed by this heat or have not had to adopt mechanisms to cope with it.

As temperatures climb into triple digits and the humidity raises the heat index to insane levels, trees adopt two basic and related strate-gies, said Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at the New York Botanical Garden.

The first is to wilt. Prolonged wilting in drought-stressed plants, especially young ones, can be deadly, but temporary wilting on established trees and shrubs is a defense mech-anism and can occur even if soil moisture is adequate. By folding its leaves, the plant reduces its foliar surface area to sunlight and reduces the evaporative effects of the wind.

Plan BThe second stratagem is to close

the microscopic pores — stomates — found mostly on the undersides of the leaves. This shuts down transpiration and the gaseous exchanges needed for photosynthesis, in which the tree takes in carbon dioxide and releases water and oxygen.

When the heat is prolonged and the rain dries up, our temperate hard-woods react in progressively drastic ways, Forrest said. First they wilt, then the leaves show signs of scorch-ing and then they drop prematurely. He likens it to getting a tan, then sunburn, then heat stroke.

Tony Aiello, of the Morris Abore-tum in Philadelphia, is less worried when trees go into stress mode after early August because by they have made most of their growth and carbohydrate stores for the year. The extreme heat — the heat index was in the triple digits — was mitigated by its brevity and the abundant rainfall of recent weeks. “If we hadn’t had the rain I think we would see a lot more leaves falling, a lot more browning,” he said.

Young trees need helpThat applies to established trees

with extensive roots systems, but trees planted in the past three years still need help when it’s hot and dry.

They should get an inch of water a week during the growing season; some experts say two inches during heat spells. Casey Trees offers rain gauges and electronic alerts to help folks water young trees.

At the State Arboretum of Virgin-

ia in Blandy, arborist Chris Schmidt spent much of the first day of the recent heat wave getting water to young trees there, including rare franklinia trees she has grown from seed. She is recounting this while sitting under the shade of an old white pine.

We can retreat indoors if we have to. But Forrest, who has been around trees his whole career, still marvels at what they can endure.

They stand out in freezing weath-er, in blistering heat, in hurricanes, during droughts, and yet they sol-dier on while giving us (and other, more furry creatures) shelter and sustenance. We wouldn’t last long as trees, he muses. “Particularly if you had to get food from sunlight and carbon dioxide and water, with nobody feeding us steaks or raspber-ries.”

On a micro level, trees shelter us from the infernal summer sun. On a macro level and in an age of global warming, the ability of trees to cool the environment while exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen makes tree planting a no-brainer.

A study published July 5 by scientists in the Crowther Lab in Zurich identified more than 2 billion acres of land worldwide that is not densely settled or used for agricul-ture and could be forested to buffer climate change. Once mature, such forests could capture 200 gigatonnes of additional carbon. I’m not sure what a gigatonne is, but it sounds like a lot.

Trees can’t escape heat but have coping mechanisms

Jahi Chikwendiu/Washington Post File Photo

Heat waves rise from a tree-lined hike and bike trail July 16 as Susan Stone Lee, vaca-tioning from Waco, walks her dog, Waffles, in Reston, Virginia.

BY ANDREW SOERGELAssociated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Ind. — At 79 years old, Art McManus says he’s still able to hop on the trac-tor and maintain the 160 acres of cherry trees at his orchard in Traverse City, Michigan.

His children have gone on to start lives of their own, though he gets some help running his farmers market from his daughter-in-law. But he hires seasonal help to keep the cherry opera-tion moving. “I’ve been at it all my life,” he says. “I enjoy it.”

For McManus and many farmers across the country, assistive technology, help from seasonal hires and family members, and a general improvement in the health of U.S. seniors in recent decades have helped them remain pro-ductive well into their 60s, 70s and beyond.

Farmers staying on the job longer can restrict land options of younger farmers, mak-ing it harder for begin-ners to crack into the industry, experts say. They worry that without the older farmers, there might not be enough younger people inter-ested in agriculture to support America’s food production needs.

“It’s a problem,” says Milt McGiffen, an agron-

omist, plant physiologist and researcher at the University of California, Riverside. “There isn’t a magic bullet to fix it. And the other problem is you have less people going into ag and you need more food coming out the other end” with a growing U.S. population.

In the U.S. last year, the median age for domestic farmers, ranchers and other agri-cultural managers was 56.4 years old. That’s the highest median age of any major occupation tracked by the govern-ment’s Current Popula-tion Survey for which data was available. The age has ticked up by half a year since 2012, despite the median age of the entire labor force falling slightly over the same period.

Nearly 29 percent of farmers were at least 65 years of age last year, and less than 13 percent were under the age of 35. Experts say steep equipment costs, limited land availability and competition from older farmers are among the reasons younger work-ers struggle to establish themselves.

“With the cost of land and equipment, I don’t know how you can make it work (as a young farm-er). It’ll cost $1 million to get into it,” McManus says.

Agriculture’s age

Technology keeps farmers on job longer imbalance and the bar-riers to entry for young farmers have not gone unnoticed by U.S. lawmak-ers. A House panel plans a hearing Thursday to start addressing the challenges faced by new farmers.

“It’s important and it’s my job to ensure Congress and this administration hear these stories loud and clear,” said Democratic Rep. Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, who leads the House

Small Business subcom-mittee that deals with rural development and agriculture.

With time and mon-ey invested in land and equipment, some older farmers are reluctant to cede their operations to younger workers. Techno-logical advancements have made it easier for them to work longer, according to agriculture workers and experts.