Content
- Brown needles on a blue spruce - A guide to root cause research
- Failures in care make needles brown
- These diseases cause brown needles
- These pests cause brown needles
- Tips
Brown needles are mostly showing signs of illness or care
Brown needles on a blue spruce - A guide to root cause research
If the previously shimmering blue leaves of your spruce spruce take on a dull brown tone, there is usually an urgent need for action. To help your picea pungens, the cause of the damage must be known. This guide shows the most common triggers for brown needles on a blue spruce.
Previous article These pests are out for blue spruces - tips to combatFailures in care make needles brown
Plant your blue spruce in soil with a pH between 6.5 and 7.5, already prevent one of the common causes of brown needles. If, on the other hand, the following care mistakes occur, your spruce will not be spared from the damage:
As a conifer, the blue spruce relies on an adequate supply of magnesium. If there is a deficiency of this special nutrient, the needles first turn yellow and later brown. With the administration of Epsom salts the shortcoming can be solved.
These diseases cause brown needles
If nursing errors can be ruled out as the cause, these diseases turn into the focus as a trigger for brown needles:
Although they are different fungi, they ultimately cause the same image of damage. In the absence of effective home and garden pest control, prudent care is the only effective form of prevention.
These pests cause brown needles
There are mainly 2 types of insects, which treat their spruce so much that the needles turn brown. If you notice 4-5 mm small, brown, roller-shaped beetles, you are dealing with book printers (Ips typographus). If, however, the branches are covered with yellowish, pineapple-like bile in May and June, the Fichtengallenlaus (Sacchiphantes viridis) has struck.
Tips
In the context of root cause analysis, it is often overlooked in the heat of battle that brown needles can be due to a natural vegetation cycle. Although the blue spruce thrives as an evergreen conifer, it exchanges her needle dress every 7 years at the latest. During this process, the needles turn brown before being dropped.