Iowajer: You do not need Orbit or Bumper or much of anything else to successfully grow tart cherries in Iowa. I am from Iowa so know the climate, and believe me Virginia is worse for just about every insect and disease. Yet I have grown tart cherries for 35 years with no problems -- except for the following: The normal lifespan of a tart cherry tree like Northstar or Meteor is about 20 years, give or take 5 years, but it is not age alone that kills them. It is the bacterial disease that develops with age that does it. I have had 2 Northstars, 2 Meteors, and 1 large Montmorency, all planted in 1979. The Northstars were finished before 20 years, one Meteor lasted 22 years, the Montmorency about the same, and the last Meteor was removed more recently at the ripe age of around 25 years. All of them were victims of bacterial disease and nothing else. All of the symptoms you describe can be attributed to one or another of the signs of bacterial disease. In advanced stages, the disease, which develops cankers on the limbs, eventually kills those limbs which should be cut off promptly. In the meantime, cherries become smaller, and often rot on the tree, though the trees will continue to produce. Leaves begin to look punky. At 15 years of age, and showing the symptoms you describe, your tree may have about 5 years of useful life left. None of the cocktail of chemicals you applied to your tree would have much, if any effect on bacterial disease, even expensive products like Orbit, and most particularly the useless combo sprays sold by Bonide. The best tactic against bacterial disease is to delay its onset, and that is done with one or two thorough dormant sprays of a copper product like Kocide that has some real copper strength. You should begin dormant spraying with copper while the trees are young, well before any evident signs of disease appear, just as you would with any stone fruit tree. With foresight, you may be able to hold off this disease for an additional 5-10 years, and you should apply dormant copper to your existing tree as well, although you are conducting a rearguard action that cannot cure the disease at this stage. Rather than putting a lot of money into expensive chemicals that will do your tree no good, I suggest you put the bucks into a new Northstar or Meteor tree that will be ready to take over when your existing tree checks out, as it surely will do. I planted a new Meteor 5 years ago when the handwriting was on the wall, and a new Montmorency this spring. The new Meteor is covered with fruit and ready this season to take over from the last old tree I removed. Both my climate and yours, BTW, are ideally suited to growing tart cherries. Some years I have had so many that I made 20 gallons of wine from pure juice. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Whaas: Yes, pines and spruces can exude sap, but that sap is not enough to cover large wounds, and even if it were, it would not prevent rot. Pine sap can for a time can create a barrier that can delay fungal infections, but it is not itself a fungicide. In fact, I have had a lot of experience with large wounds to both pines and Norway spruce trees--the fungal rots enter these trees faster than in most, and the rot spreads very, very fast. Before I hit on the liquid copper fungicide, I experimented with Captan, and with Bordeaux mixture. With both I saw fungal fruiting bodies within two years--maybe just 1.5 years. But, if one prunes off smaller side branches from pines and spruces, there is virtually no risk of fungal rot entering those kinds of cuts. With red pines especially, the cut surface is impregnated with pitch, and is very, very rot resistant. But this is not the kind of situation I am recommending this fungicide treatment for. The cuts I made on about a dozen white pines, for example, were to remove 1/2 of a forked tree, and the cuts were generally about 8" by 12". My forester who saw what I had done said that I was wasting my time trying to save such trees. Hah! He should see them now. White pines with a tight "V" shaped fork will eventually split in storms about 90% of the time, hence my acting to save them. Every one of the trees I cut this way about 27 years ago is now a beautiful, straight white pine tree, 100 feet tall, and as healthy as any tree can be. I have also had a few white pine and spruce trees clawed by bears, leaving large areas with the bark removed. I have treated these trees also, and no rot has appeared in these either. With the spruce, sap did cover a part of the damaged areas. With the white pine, sap actually covered very little. But, even had the sap covered these areas, there would have been a delay of just three, or maybe up to 5 years--not nearly enough time for the callus to cover the wounds. --Spruce

Those quantities would be per each watering. At first, use the finger method daily -early in the mornings- to determine if you need to water. Insert a finger into the soil to a depth of 4 inches (10.2 cm) approx and see how the soil feels. If it is dry or almost dry, water the shrub and make a note on a wall calendar saying that you watered on that day. After checking daily for 2-3 weeks, review the information on the calendar. Determine about how often you had to water: for example, once every 3/4/5/etc days. Then set the sprinkler or drip irrigation to water the plant (1.5 gallons) on the same frequency (every 3/4/5/days). But if the weather changes and the temperatures depart from the usual and stay much higher/lower, you can use the finger method for another 2-3 weeks to see if you need to tweak things and water every 5/6/7 days instead. I normally give my hydrangeas 1 gallon of water per watering in Spring, Fall and Winter. During the summer, I increase that to 1.5 gallons. If the winter is not mild (that is,m it is cold, snowy, icy) then I try to water them only once every two weeks. Larger hydrangeas will need more water than that. Note: if you notice that the edges of the leaves are browning inwards, the plant needs more water. If you notice that the leaves are drooping/wilting, they should recover on their own by morning if the soil is moist. When I see an extreme wilting episode, I use the finger method and immediately water if the soil is almost dry or dry. If the leaves remain limp 24/7, the plant roots probably have caught root rot. It happened to me once with Alice, a large oakleaf hydrangea. I too enjoy the look of the oakleaf hydrangea leaves in the fall. They are very nice indeed and I have been trying to add more plants with nice fall foliage. By the way, I looked up H. quercifolia 'Burgundy' in a book and it said that it was an introduction from a place in the Netherlands but did not say how big or wide it gets. Do you know what the approximate dimensions are? Just wondering. There are quite a few "dwarf" oakleaf hydrangeas now and since I do not have much shady real estate, I have been concentrating on getting "small" hydrangeas.

Leaves are bedding; bedding is edible but the worms should be getting more nutritious food as well. I don't worry so much about other bugs in the worm bin. I advise you to relax about it as well. Worms alone cannot do the work of a worm bin; there's a whole ecosystem involved that competes and cooperates and eventually finds a balance that fits the local conditions. You already can't do anything to keep out fungus and bacteria, and you might choose to allow some of the bigger organisms. Isopods (sow bugs/pill bugs/ roly polys) in particular can be helpful: they're like little living shredders, tearing down tough cellulose-based material like stems, bark, cardboard, and wood, into partially decomposed, worm usable material.