March 29, 2022
Blue Spruces
I’m waffling on the spruces. For months, I refused to return the calls from Joe at Davey to renew my contract for spraying the spruces for the rhizosphaera needle cast fungus disease. After all, I have taken the pledge to keep the lawn herbicide and pesticide free. How could I let a fungicide be sprayed on my spruces?
Then Ben stopped by. I showed him the spruces, told him how poorly I thought they were doing and that I was even thinking of taking them down,they looked so scraggly. Ben said my spruces looked good compared to most he has seen.
“One more season of spraying,” he told me, “and they will look great again.”
I went inside and called Joe. “Sign me up,” I told him, “I am going to save them”
Then I decided to look up the product that Davey has been using on the spruces. It was not that easy to figure out. In my files from Davey I have sheets on two different products. Koicide 3000 is a copper fungicide made by Certis Inc, which is a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co. CuPRO 5000 is also
a copper fungicide made by SePRO, whose home base is Carmel, Indiana, the town where my high school boyfriend now lives to whom I send cards and letters.
I assume that these are the two products used by Davey in treating the trees, but I cannot not be sure. Nowhere does the bill actually say what was used. I know enough to know that copper hydroxide is far less toxic than many products previously used in agriculture and landscape plantings. But that doesn’t mean that these sprays are not harmful.
Both products are registered with the EPA, but I suspect this doesn’t mean much. Both products are touted as environmentally safe, but I realize that such language in a product description most likely means just that it is EPA approved. After all, if these sprays are so safe, why does Davey leave little yellow signs all over my property after an application warning people to stay away? And why do the information sheets carry the warning, in large capital letters, “DANGER/PELIGRO”? If the product is potentially harmful to humans and domestic animals, what about the birds and bees?
Puzzling over all of this, I called Joe and cancelled once again.
“I am going to let them go,” I told him. “I have taken a vow to go pesticide free.”
“Your decision,” he said, “but honestly it’s a shame.”
Recently, however, I was chatting with a fellow master gardener. We got to talking about spruces and the problem of the fungus. She told me that she sprayed her trees every year. I asked who did the work.
“Peter of Cedar Tree Properties,” she replied.
Peter has been doing organic lawn care for me for years. I trust Peter to care about the bigger picture and I trust him to tell me the truth about the product he uses. I called him immediately, he came, looked at the spruces, declared them well worth saving and has promised to send me a quote for the cost. Meanwhile, I am writing to him to find out exactly what product he uses and exactly what environmental concerns exist for this product. But I am definitely tempted to let Peter continue to save my spruces.
I planted four of these spruces, the Picea pungens ‘Kosteri,’ in June of the first summer I lived at Columbine Drive. I had spent the months since moving in pondering the question of what tree would make the best boundary between my neighbor’s yard and my own and what tree would make the best backdrop for my future garden.
I settled on the blue spruce. I have always loved blue; I have always loved spruces; they offered four-season interest; they would do the job of enclosing and blocking in winter as well as in summer. Besides, in my then quite limited horticultural knowledge, the blue spruce was the ultimate specimen tree, highly desirable, even coveted. And no one else in the neighborhood had one yet.
I hired my neighbor, who was also a landscape designer, to purchase and plant the trees. We fought, bitterly, over the number and spacing. I insisted I needed only four and that they be planted far enough apart so that their bottom branches would just touch at maturity. Pat insisted that I would not be happy with so much space between the trees as they were growing. He wanted to plant five and put them close together. I declared, rather pompously, that I was planting for the seventh generation, not for the current moment. Pat capitulated under the weight of my self-importance and set four in as I had marked.
Two years after planting the ‘Kosteri,’ I discovered an even bluer blue spruce than the ones along the back border.
“What is this?” I asked Randy, my favorite nurseryman at Faddegons, of the tiny 3’ wonder I held in my hand, a bit misshapen but covered with steely blue needles.
“It’s a Picea pungens ‘Hoopsi,’” he answered. “It’s got a much sharper color than the ‘Kosteri’. It’s won a lot of awards.”
“I have to have it,” I said. I bought it, brought it home, and planted it myself in a prominent spot along the side of my house, perfect for an even more special specimen tree.
A month later Pat came by with a 9’ ‘Hoopsi.’
“Look what I have for you,” he said. “It’s a proper version of that squirt you put in your lawn.”
Of course, it was three times the cost, but I couldn’t resist. It was three times the size, already most impressive. I tossed the seventh generation out the window and went for immediate gratification. Pat moved the wee tree to a different spot farther down the side yard and set his beauty in my prime location. Today, some twenty-two years later, the two trees are the same size, though I must admit that Pat’s tree has the perfect shape he noted as a selling point. I have actually had people offer to buy it.
The ‘Hoopsi’ have survived the fungus far better than the ‘Kosteri.’ Still, if I do not treat, I will most likely lose them too. Can I bear it?
Several years ago, in a freak tornado, I lost my ‘Cleveland Select’ Callery pear, the first one I planted, the one with the brandy snifter shape and the glorious fall foliage, the one that gave me shade in the summer and interest in the winter. As I turned my downed tree into stacks of branches and chunks of wood to place by the road for the town to come and take and turn into chips that I could use to make my paths, I swore that I would leave Columbine Drive if anything ever happened to my spruces. I was angry at whatever force had taken down my beloved tree, and in the usual absurdities of people under emotional stress I thought I could hurt that force by making such a promise.
I have grown past that absurdity. I don’t’ think I would have to leave Columbine Drive if I let my spruces go. Indeed I think I would enjoy making in their place a hedgerow of native plants that would support pollinators and caterpillars.
But here’s the real rub. Some ten years after planting the ‘Kosteri’ I went to a performance at Tanglewood of Schubert’s 9th symphony. I have not had many visions in my lifetime, but I had one that night. At one point in the music, I saw my spruces dancing. They took hold of each other’s hands, those lower now-touching branches, and swayed gracefully forward and back, forward and back, bowing down and lifting up, in time to the music. I swear I heard them saying ‘Thank you.’
I feel I have a contract with my spruces. I fought to get them planted properly, I have fought to keep them alive, I have promised to move if they die, Ibelieve they have thanked me for planting them. And the ‘Hoopsi’ are still gorgeous.
But I have also taken a pledge to go pesticide and herbicide free. I don’t know what to do.
Any thoughts?
Kosteri, planted by Pat, 1998
