Last fall when I first went to the house ALL of the trees needed much care. They hadn't been pruned in decades, several were completely dead. The fruit trees were pathetic with much bark stripped off. The elms had much dead wood and needed pruning, but the leaves themselves were eaten away like little caterpillars had munched the tender parts between the veins. The only healthy, large leaves were way up on the tree, which of course I could not reach even with a tall ladder. The trees are not vase-shaped like Valley Forge elms. I would like to be proactive in spraying for whatever is eating the leaves up. I thought at first it was Japanese Beetles, but now I doubt that. It seems that Japanese Beetles have probably not even reached the Rockies yet. As soon as the trees leaf out I'll take some photos. Any idea what I should spray for and when? Thanks so much!

Actually, this evening I walked back into the woods behind my property and found a similar elm, about 50 feet away, but not in sight of this sapling. So I'd guess that was the source. I know it would make sense to replace it with a better elm, but in fact, I wasn't planning to plant an elm there at all. I already have enough big trees around, so if I removed it, I'd plant other things there. Guess I'm just looking for a rationale not to kill it.

Bon, I just cannot imagine the elm roots are alleopathic enough to cause your plants harm. I use elm leaves in my compost all the time, and have elm, pecan, hackberry and oak trees growing just outside my garden's north fence. They are so close that I can just about touch the tree limbs if I am standing inside the garden's north fence...except the fence is taller than me so I can't reach them because of the fence. I have all manner of tree roots underground and they continually move into the garden. Where they are in the top few inches of soil, I rototill and dig out what I can in the winter, but they're back again by the next winter. We have 14.4 acres but almost all of it is heavily forested, so there is nowhere I can plant far enough from trees that tree roots won't come into my garden. Might the elm tree roots outcompete your plants for water and nutrients? Sure. But will they have a serious and adverse effect on their growth? I don't really think so. If elms and hackberries were highly alleopathic, nothing would grow underneath them in the woods....and every inch of ground beneath them in the woods has smaller trees like black cherry or redbud, and all kinds of groundcover plants. By contrast, wherever we have black walnuts in the woods, there is not much of anything growing under their canopy as far out as their drip line. From observing them in the woodland together, you can see how black walnut's alleopathy is so much stronger. For the compost pile, just put down a couple of layers of very heavy black plastic---4 mm or 6 mm would be ideal, and put your compost on top of it. That largely will keep root intrusion from being a problem. You can get a thick row of black plastic someplace like Lowe's or Home Depot. Cardboard will decompose in a few months, so it wouldn't keep out the intrusive tree roots that keep invading your compost pile. It takes a very long time to build healthy soil in which tomato plants will thrive. This is my 14th year with this garden and my soil isn't even close to where I want it to be. Clearly, it is a lot better that it was 14 years ago, but I didn't even see much improvement in plant performance until I'd already been improving the soil heavily every year for 4 or 5 years. You just have to work at it on a continual basis. Because heat eats compost, no matter how much compost you add one year, it will be almost gone before the next growing season. I add all the compost I can in the off season when there's no plants in the bed, then I mulch, mulch, mulch heavily. As the mulch breaks down, it further enriches the soil. I add more mulch to some bed in my garden every week. It is a process that never ends. Good soil isn't something you just whip up out of thin air by adding some organic matter to your natural dirt. It takes years of constant improvement for it to develop and evolve. It is easy for us to blame the weather, the lack of rain, the heat, etc., when plants don't perform the way we want, but I think much of the time, the truth is that our soil just is not yet where it needs to be. The amount of improvement needed will vary depending on what kind of soil you start with, but the need for constant improvement, especially in terms of adding organic matter, never ceases. Dawn

We have four species of elm common in MidTenn, American, red, winged, and September. Occasionally one will turn yellow and die, but that is not all that common. I'm not sure it is DED or one of the other maladies that afflict elms. I have planted lots of winged elms on my place, and I encourage volunteers. I like them although most consider them trash trees. I am also allowing red/Americans to volunteer. I don't know which I have, I haven't keyed them out. I once read that DED is less of a problem in warm climates, I don't have a source. Oak wilt is present here and becoming a problem, especially in the black oak group. Southern red and black oaks are particularly susceptible.