Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Your trees and landscapes require year-round care, and The Davey Tree Expert Company is here to help provide you with expert advice. Join our professional Davey arborists and gardening-expert host Doug Oster to learn all about caring for your properties. We'll talk about introduced pests, seasonal tree care, tree diseases, arborists' favorite trees, how to help your trees thrive and everything in between. Tune in every Thursday because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer.
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
What's Wrong with My Boxwood? - Blights, Box Tree Moth and More
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Nick Dios from Davey's West Cleveland office talks all about boxwoods, including different types, choosing and planting the right one and its biggest threats, such as blights, leaf miners, winter and the box tree moth.
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about boxwoods, please read our blogs Are Box Tree Moths Dangerous? Check Your Boxwoods for Emerging Pest: Box Tree Moth and Seasonal Boxwood Shrub Care.
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Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oester. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined by Nick Diaz. He's an assistant district manager at the West Cleveland office of the Deby Tree Expert Company. Nick, welcome to the show. And today it's all boxwoods, right? Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for having me, Doug. So first thing I want
Box tree moth
SPEAKER_02to ask you about is this box tree moth. I know nothing about it.
SPEAKER_00Hmm, okay. Well, so box tree moth is the probably the most recent uh invasive species. You know, we hear about spotted lantern fly and Asian longhorn beetle. You know, this box tree moth has popped up pretty recently uh here in northeast Ohio. That's where I'm at right now. Um, and um so I would say it's been in our area for maybe about two, three years now, but um, it is a um uh a pest that's come from China, and uh that's where it originally came from, made it over to Europe, eventually Canada, and we surmise that it came over from Canada uh around in the New York, Rochester, Niagara County area, and has since made it over to pretty almost, I mean, half the United States by now, but it is um the the when it's in the caterpillar phase, it its delicacy is our number one planted evergreen shrub in the United States, boxwoods.
SPEAKER_02So will it defoliate the plant? Is that the idea when the it's in that caterpillar stage?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so when they're feeding, they're very, very hungry and they're in high numbers. So you could see anything. Uh, I mean, I've found them, you catch them right when they start to feed, and you'll see kind of a dead area. If it goes unchecked, you know, you can come out one day and the whole boxwood is defoliated, completely chewed up. Yeah.
Their life cycle
SPEAKER_02So what's the life cycle?
SPEAKER_00So the life cycle, oops, I'm trying to turn this off here. Life cycle, um, you know, they will um you know overwinter, they can they can tolerate our winters, and then um, you know, they will come out around uh any as early as March, and then they are gonna feed, um, and then they're gonna pupate, and that's when they'll turn into the moth. And there's several life cycles throughout the season, so um we want to keep eyes on them everywhere from early you know March, mid-March to you know, we're going you know, late August, September. We're monitoring for this pest.
SPEAKER_02So, how do you deal with the caterpillar
How to deal with the caterpillars
SPEAKER_02like you would any other caterpillar? Is there anything special about it? Or are we just uh for some people be reach reaching for spinocid for an organic control and then another pesticide otherwise?
SPEAKER_00No, you you you hit the nail on the head, just like any other caterpillar, um, except this one, just you got to catch it. So I think vigilance is gonna be you know your best uh strategy. You know, if you got boxwoods, get out there, open them up. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, look inside. It's not hard to find, especially this time of year. You're gonna see about an inch uh long caterpillar. Um, green, uh kind of a black stripe or black head. It's easy to find online. There's tons of information. Um, so you know what you're looking for. But um, you'll see a lot of webbing. If you see lots of that very fine silky webbing, then you could do uh mechanical removal, pluck them right off of there, pull them off, stomp them, put them in the garbage, crush them, um, and keep an eye on them. Uh, but yeah, if you wanted to go like what you said, the spine said, or if you even just like a bifenthrin, um, yeah, that's recommended as well. Um, but the thing is, is we don't want to treat um proactively. That's not really necessary. Um, we want to, if we find the pest, then we would want some intervention if we wanted to use uh a treatment.
SPEAKER_02That's a great point because people are gonna start hearing about this pest, and that's exactly what they'll want to do. They'll want a preemptive uh spray to use, but we wait until we actually see the problem, which uh is an important part of this. Boy, you
Boxwood blight
SPEAKER_02know, it's boxwoods, like you said, the most popular evergreen that we plant, and they've had a tough run here, uh whether it's the bad wet bad winter or leaf miners or the blight. So let's let's go to Boxwood Blight. How that's been around for a while, right?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I don't really know like in depth the full you know history of Boxwood Blight or even what the Latin name is. I would have to contact my mycologist to give me the lowdown on that. Um, but from my experience, you know, being in the industry for almost 20 years now and um working for Davy Tree for most of that time and you know, traveling around, seeing different things. Here, again, I can speak to Northeast Ohio. Boxwood blight is a little bit of a of a uh of a hype. It's not as bad as we think. Anytime that I've been at a different Davy Tree office and we're running an analysis or a diagnosis and we send it into our lab, nine times out of ten, it's actually going to come back as volutella blight. Um, that's way more common than the the boxwood blight, which again, I haven't had a lot. Like I remember when it was on the scene and we were making sure we protected all of our beautiful hedgerow and all that. Um, but I never really seen it in Ohio and and some of the other offices too, from St. Louis to Rochester, New York. I mean, I've seen um I've seen boxwoods look worse from just a bad mite infestation or silate or something like that. Not to say that it's out there, but again, volutella has been the main thing that really makes them look crummy, or at least in our neck of the woods.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's good to hear, actually, because for that is probably for most of the eastern part of the country. I mean, uh, northeastern Ohio is is similar to what we're have here in Pittsburgh, and we hear a lot about boxwood blight, but as you said, you have to have a scientist tell you it's boxwood blight, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. Yeah, you don't just look at it with your naked eye and be like, oh, there it is. Any fungal infection, you know that um you can see the symptoms. Sometimes you could see the spores and stuff, but with a lot of what we're dealing with and stuff that we want to um maybe have some some intervention with a fungicide or some management plan, you know, we really want to make sure that we're not just launching fungicides into our uh environment unnecessarily. So, yeah, I mean getting somebody that that knows how to diagnose, has the right tools, has the right know-how, um you know, that's that's uh that's key in in agriculture. Tell
Volutella blight
SPEAKER_00me the name of that blight again. Uh so we were talking about boxwood blight. Oh, volutella.
SPEAKER_01Um, let me lead you together again. Tell me the name of that blight again.
SPEAKER_00Volutella blight.
SPEAKER_02And so what do we do for that? And how do we know we have it? Is that another one where you've got to have an expert tell us that we've we have it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, again, you want to diagnose, you know, by um sending it to a lab, um, whether it's local extension or here, uh Davy Tree, we have a lab. We're more than happy to send in lab um samples to get tested, you know. Uh but again, die back on a box wood could be mites, could be silids, could be box tree moth, could be uh volutella blight. So um, you know, that the treatment plan, yeah, you can't treat for it. It does take a little special uh management with regards to what products you're using with fun with regards to fungicide, but um definitely something that you can get you can manage. You just gotta know what you're dealing with.
SPEAKER_02Okay, next up, leaf miners.
Leaf miners
SPEAKER_00Oh boy, all right. What do you want to know about leaf miners?
SPEAKER_02How do I know if I have leaf miners and how bad is it for the plant?
SPEAKER_00Leaf miners, you know, it depends on who you talk to. Again, um, you know, leaf miners are pretty uh pretty distinct uh pest to identify. Uh you get like the blistering and you get a very distinct um pattern on the leaves. If you look at a single leaf, you'll see kind of blotches on the leaf. Um, you can open it up and actually look at um the inside of the leaf. So if my hands are the leaves, it's actually eating like in between here. Um, and you'll see uh that like blistering kind of effect. Um, you know, they they can, you know, have in high enough numbers, you'll start to they'll just make your boxwoods look really crummy. Will they completely decimate uh a boxwood? I haven't really seen it, but um again, if if uh if if we focus more on plant health uh and a nice strong, you know, the good vitality, good and it planted in the right spot, usually the boxwoods can outgrow it a little bit. But if you want to um, you know, let's say you're that type of person that you want it to look clean, you you want no pest problems, yeah, you could you could easily do like maybe um uh systemic treatment uh or early spring foliar treatment to manage uh you know, leaf miner. Same thing with silids, you know, when you see the cupping and curling of the leaves, um, the silids, um very similar management plan too, but they're they're less of an issue. Again, more aesthetic, if anything else.
General plant health fights pests and disease
SPEAKER_02Well, you said something very important there, I think, and it's plant health in general. Is that the way to at least start with fighting off a lot of these problems?
SPEAKER_00Well, let me ask you this, Doug. Would you rather um take a pill or medicine for every time you're feeling crummy? Uh, or would you rather just eat healthy and exercise and you know get sick less? And when you do get sick, you're not sick as long, right? The dreaded question from a question.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, Nick. You're right, you're right. I know you're right. Uh so what do we do with that box wood? Fertilizing it, making sure that it's happy, making sure it's planted in the right place. Let's talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um, you know, with regards to the you know, the golden rule, right tree, right place, right shrub, right place. We want to take into account soil conditions, water, uh, sunlight, all those things. Boxwoods, particularly, you know, those are pretty hardy. You can get away with a lot of spots anywhere. But again, anything you're planting, you want to start off by A, planting it in the right spot, B, planting it properly, because that's gonna dictate the the quality of life for the rest of the life of the plant. Um, and then, you know, making sure that it is getting what it needs, um, if it needs certain, you know, what as it's getting established, uh, making sure it's getting watered regularly, not too much, not too little. Um, and then also just good old TLC plant healthcare, given maybe an annual fertilization. Um, and if we can prop up the health of these plants, like I said, if uh if I'm taking my vitamins and I'm exercising and get enough sleep, I'm not gonna get as I'm not gonna get sick as much. Same thing with these plants. If they're healthy and they're doing good, um, and they get a pest problem or a hardship, uh, they can fight that off a little bit better or they will, you know, recover faster, uh is is the idea.
SPEAKER_02So well, I want to go back to boxwood
Which blights are more common?
SPEAKER_02blight in general because the latest thing is the introduction of boxwoods that are boxwood blight resistant. But but if boxwood blight isn't that big of a deal, I mean I I just I there's so many cool boxwoods out there. It doesn't have to be a little ball. There's nothing wrong with a little ball that you're gonna trim it into, but there's lots of different other shapes and sizes and variegations and stuff. I'm I'm excited, Nick, because I think I can plant regular old boxwoods again. And I was thinking that I couldn't. I'm I'm got sucked up into the hype with everyone releasing a uh a boxwood blight resistant plant. When you're planting boxwoods, it's cool just to put a boxwood that you like as long as you have the right place for it.
SPEAKER_00I mean, specifically with boxwoods, I mean, I would be more concerned about the box tree moth um than I would box um boxwood blight. Um again, in my travels, uh the worst cases I've ever seen were maybe um maybe like farther out east. Um, but every time because everybody at here at Davy Tree, we hear about this devastating disease, this boxwood blight. So we're we're testing, we're testing, we're testing. So we have tons of data that shows volutella blight, positive, you know, negative on uh boxwood blight. So I I mean personally, I got to the point where like I I could pretty much guess it's not gonna be boxwood blight. Man, that's good to hear.
SPEAKER_02Because these things come out and you get you get scared, you get scared about it, and it it starts spreading, and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing, Nick. I'm supposed to, I'm telling people what to do, and yet I was on a complete uh misunderstanding of the uh uh how bad black boxwood blight was in uh uh the eastern part of the U.S. So that's good to know. When you're planting
Choosing and planting boxwoods
SPEAKER_02a boxwood, is there anything special you think of that you want to put in? Is there is there one kind that's like because I don't know a lot about boxwoods except that when I look through what's being offered, I see some that could be like a column or that could have you know a bit of property where one has variegation. I think it looks really cool. Is there anything you think about when you're you're thinking about planting a boxwood on a property, assuming it's the right spot?
SPEAKER_00What I think about is not to overthink it. And that would be my that would be my advice is um you will find some literature out there on uh boxwoods that are you know pest resistant, disease resistant, like you were referring to. There's you'll find literature and information out there on don't get these uh boxes microphilia, uh what is it? Uh uh something along those lines. Uh pretty much the boxwoods that come from uh you know Asian heritage, China. They oh, these ones are more resistance to box tree moth because they kind of came up together. They're still gonna get chewed to heck. So if you're really you know that concerned about it, um there are some uh different varieties that are supposed to be more resistant. If that makes you sleep better at night, great. But at the same time, we think we have these big problems and they wind up not being as bad as we think. Um, you know, uh if if you really just wanted to move away from it, I see a lot of folks and we make some recommendations where um if you want to go with maybe an inkberry, holly, something along those lines, those are becoming a little bit more popular because of a lot of these issues that we're talking about with boxwoods.
SPEAKER_02Well, I've got like a golden one, golden variegated one, and I just I just love it. And and and I was overthinking it, Nick. I I just I love the way you said that. Like you're overthinking it, and that's such a perfect way to look at it. Uh uh, I love that plant. But
Winter desiccation
SPEAKER_02man, I'm telling you what, the winters though, especially this winter where I'm at, we had a we had a tough end of the winter, and it really showed on the boxwood. Where are you at, Doug? What city? Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_00You're in Pittsburgh, okay. Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02I grew up in Cleveland, so I know what real winters are.
SPEAKER_00Sure. No, I was at uh I was out in Pittsburgh uh what a year, two, through two, three years ago, um, doing some work. And yeah, you guys get hammered with winter desiccation and boxwoods. Um, again, if it's winter desiccation or a pest, if they're doing good and they're strong throughout the growing season and you're taking care of them, then they can tolerate those hardships. Um, you know, but a little TLC doesn't, you know, a little TLC goes a long way. I always learned in school, my my professor, uh, he would always say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So if you can take care of them and plant it the right way and you know, not over uh overdo it with watering or anything like that, then maybe it'll it'll rebound from that winter a little bit easier too.
SPEAKER_02Well, Nick, this has been so much fun and such a relief. For me as a as a someone who who loves boxwoods,
Nick's career journey
SPEAKER_02tell me a little bit about how you got into this. Why is this job right for you?
SPEAKER_00Gosh, uh, well, thank you for asking that question. I um I did I my first job, I did landscape work, you know, back when I was before I could drive, just needed a summer job. I did yard work with dad. Uh so I'm like, oh, go landscape. And uh I didn't know it then, but I really like being outside. I'm that type of person, as are a lot of us in the industry. And um, I I my story led me to doing landscape. I wound up having my own business. A friend of mine, uh, you know, we we went together and on a business and we did that for a year two. And he goes, you know, you should go to school for this hor this uh landscape stuff. You really like doing it. And I was like, You can go to school for this. I'm like, all right, cool. And then uh, you know, my wife, we were dating at the time, she looked up all of the schools in Ohio that offer a good horticulture program, and she led me in the right direction. And I wound up going to Kent State for horticulture, falling in love with arbor culture. Uh, and I had to do an internship uh about 20 years ago, and that internship was with Davy Tree, haven't left since. But um, I'm very fortunate because I do like what I do. I can meet with lots of people and clients who want to know right from wrong, and I kind of help them tread those waters. So I just try to do the best I can and take advantage of the resources we have at the company. Well, Nick, I'm a golden flash too. So oh, nice, very good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I went to Kent uh maybe a little bit before you were there. Sure.
SPEAKER_00I wasn't at main campus, so I stayed out of trouble.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was at the main campus too, but I was in trouble. Anyway, uh Nick, I want to thank you so much for spending some time uh on the show today because it was really enlightening what you had to say, and I just really enjoyed our conversation. So I'm sure we will talk again in the future. Um, thanks again for your time.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you, Doug. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity.
SPEAKER_02One of the reasons I love hosting this podcast is learning from people like Nick. That boxwood information is invaluable. Now, I want you to tune in every Thursday so you can hear some more invaluable information on the Talking Trees podcast from the Davy Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oester, and I want you to subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss anything. And we'd like to hear from you too. There's two ways to do it. Send us an email to podcast at Davey.com. That's P O D C A S T S at D A V E Y dot com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas could be on a future show. We'd love to hear from you. And as always, we'd like to remind you on this Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.