Oak Wilt

[Donna Hunyor]

Recently an enormous oak tree located solitarily in the middle of an island between 4 lanes of traffic at the entrance to Cameron Park, (huge, city owned park) was cut down and a trench dug around it to"keep the disease from spreading." Now a local college is also fighting oak wilt but they took a different tactic, drilling holes in a couple of affected trees and 20 others near-by and injected "chemicals." They expect the trees to be fine next spring. The news story went on to say that homeowners should apply "paint" to tree wounds to inhibit the beetle responsible for the spread. The certified oak wilt specialist/arborist gave this advice to area residents: it's not a matter of if you get oak wilt but when. The only post/information I could find regarding oak wilt was to use the sick tree treatment. Can this be used as a preventative? Is it too late once you see the leaves dropping?

[The Ent]

Sick tree treatment can be used as a preventative for a lot of things, possibly including this. Personally if it were a problem in my area I'd be foliar-spraying the trees weekly with garlic/pepper tea to discourage anything from even taking an exploratory nibble.