With warm, sunny days in full swing, your trees are exploding with lush, green leaves, reaching out new branches, and embracing their peak growing months. Unfortunately, warm weather is also the peak season for common tree pests.
Don’t Panic
While common tree pests may seem to make up a long list of threats to your trees’ health, they aren’t all a matter of life or death. Many pests will only target specific types of trees or will cause only minimal damage. So when taking care of tree pests, first identify what kind of trees you have on your property, and then how serious the damage from the particular pest you’re struggling with could be. Once you know these two key pieces of information, taking care of common tree pests is that much easier.
Aphids
Aphids are some of the most common tree pests out there in Texas, but fortunately, they aren’t the most serious. Aphids can affect all types of trees, but they present the most danger to young or recently transplanted trees, which are already vulnerable to all types of pests. There are many ways to combat aphids, including natural predators like ladybugs.
Beetles
Just as there are a lot of common tree pests, there are many different types of beetles. Some, like the emerald ash borer, will only attack one type of tree, while others, like twig girdlers, attack many different types. You may need the help of an arborist to identify what type of beetle you’re dealing with, but you can prevent beetles from harming your trees by pruning only after a hard freeze and sealing pruned branches with paint so they won’t be attracted to the smell of tree sap and have access to the tree’s more fragile, inner wood.