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juniper brown spot.. dog urine?

13 years ago

This juniper (either Juniperus scopulorum or Juniperus chinensis) has a brown spot. Both plants look healthy in my opinion, with a good growth this summer down here, and has been taking well the humid heath with around 5 hours direct sun every day (early morning and late afternoon).

I suspect this could be because of dog's urine? I don't have one but the neighbours do :)
{{gwi:648912}}From garden
{{gwi:648913}}From garden

By the way, the plant changed its colour over the summer, from light green to a more bluish form. I hope to propagate it when temperatures cool down a bit, and plant it in the ground next winter. Especially the one on the right, which has vigorous growth on the base with secondary leaders I'd like to get rid off anyways.

When I bought them:

{{gwi:648914}}From garden
{{gwi:648915}}From garden

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Comments (9)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
13 years ago
up here i would call it winter damage.. but i guess you can rule that out .. lol ...

since it is only on the one plant on the patio side.. i suspect you are correct ....

those plants in the first pic are getting a bit big for those pots.. why arent they in the ground??? .. oops.. read the facts closer .. those large pots in the 2nd pic are what look small in the first pic.. go figure on that ....

good luck

ken
in ny zone5
13 years ago
I suspectted last year hat I had one gone to the dogs, so I put little fences around the others to make it more difficult for them to find the target. Those little fences are half chicken wires with the cut wires sticking out, ouch to them!
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The brown spots are usually dead, but can sometimes surprise you by resprouting from their roots. Yellow, red, and whatnot are generally just shocked. Spreading grasses will fill the holes if your grass spreads. Realizing the vagrancies of cats, it can be hard to water the spots where they pee. If possible, though, diluting the places the cat goes will fix the problem if you get there fast enough.
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I've read that females tend to cause more turf problems. The composition of the urine is somehow more destructive and because they squat, the urine is concentrated tightly in one spot. I think it was my post you were referring to. I have a TTTF lawn with some remaining other fine fescues that preceded my TTTF overseeding. My 7 month old TTTF doesn't seem to be harmed by the pee now and instead just gets a big flush of top growth. Right now nothing at all is growing in the burned spots, which are about 2-3 inches in diameter.
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Elizabeth~I have the same issue. I don't allow my dog in my beds, but I catch my neighbors dog in my bed constantly using it, and digging in it. I've talked to her about our leash laws, and she just says she'll keep him out of my yard. They just moved in, and said they are getting a fence. I hope so, because we had decided not to get a fence when we bought our house last year, and started beds on the border of our property line to make a "living" fence. My HOA sent her a letter, but she keeps letting him out without a leash. So now our HOA has informed me to go ahead and call Animal Control since she won't stop, but I hate doing that. We are trying to be patient, but when I find him on my backporch barking at me on my property, and no one around.....ugh!
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It sounds like you've done some homework. The general idea of the organics for this is to have a sufficient population of microbes on hand for any dog pee event. The table sugar should be about a handful applied on and around the edges of the browning grass. The sugar puts the microbes into overpopulation mode so there will quickly be enough to decompose the urine. If that is what you've done and the spots didn't go away, you might look into a soil test (Logan Labs, $25). There might be a chemistry reason why the microbes could not handle the extra urine. Or it could be the zoysia is less tolerant of the additional urine than other grasses and immediately goes into dormancy. I find zoysia to be a problematic grass to grow. It is higher maintenance than they want you to believe, and very unforgiving if you make a mistake.
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goodstav
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks for the replies. It's better to know it might be just the dogs rather than disease...
I hope it will recover with time, or am I wrong?
blue_yew
13 years ago
Hello goodstav

Off topic do you have access to seed of
Araucaria angustifolia this year from
high altitude?
goodstav
Original Author
13 years ago
blue_yew,
I still have the contact information of the ones who asked me for these seeds in the old topic. It's not yet the season for harvesting them though, probably in 3 months I'll be able to get some. I'll start a new topic then, OK?

Gus
blue_yew
13 years ago
Thanks Gus will be very interesting.
tunilla
13 years ago
I would blame the dog. Dog pee is worse than paintstripper.Once had a dog lift his leg over a crate of nice cactus plants...Berlin all over. On top of that,they end up having 'strategic' plants in their quest to ward of any threats of potential intruding co-dominators, who,in turn apply the same strategy...pfff. Still, gotta live with it. Besides, better to have two happy-go-lucky dogs than one nasty fungal problem ,I would think! T.
greenlarry
13 years ago
I'll try this again...
One reason our dog is a b!tch! ;)
goodstav
Original Author
13 years ago
It turned out this wasn't dog pee. I removed it from the ground and inspected it very closely, and the real problem lay inside the foliage: caterpillars, some scales and small spiders were making a little insect feast there. No sign of fungus, though.
I manually removed most of them, and a light soap/oil recipe hopefully killed the rest of them. The top keeps growing healthily, but the foliage turned brown on almost the whole perimeter of the base. I plan to remove all this dead foliage that won't recover anyways and air layer the juniper with literally a new vase on top of the old one, building new roots. Any idea if this will work? And if I could start it now (autumn beginning in a couple of months down here)?

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