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How To Defeat Tinder Fungi
How To Defeat Tinder Fungi
Anonim

What needs to be done to destroy harmful tinder fungi on fruit trees

tinder fungus
tinder fungus

I noticed that in the literature for gardeners very little attention is paid to the fight against tinder fungi.

Meanwhile, tinder fungi in our zone are found everywhere, they settle not only on trunks, but also on branches, and even on roots, and on living trees. They cause decay of plants, and over time, their death. Therefore, I believe that summer residents and gardeners should well recognize all varieties of such tree-destroying mushrooms, know their biological characteristics and measures to combat them in a fruit and berry garden.

You need to know that infection of fruit trees with spores of polypore fungi occurs, as a rule, in the warm season. As a rule, they settle in places where the bark is damaged by sunburn, in places of frost damage or damaged by insects. When germinating, the spores form a mycelium, which penetrates into the wood and can develop there for several years. At first, the mycelium oppresses the tree, weakens it, slows down development, and then it causes the appearance of hollows in the trunk and partial or complete death of branches and roots. At the same time, annual or perennial mushroom bodies appear in places of wood damage. Ripening in August, these bodies form many spores that are carried by the wind to neighboring trees. The nature of the damage to trees by the fungus depends on the variety of tinder fungi, of which the following are most famous today.

False tinder

It settles on pear and plum trunks and causes white heart rot. Fungal bodies are most often perennial, hooflike, with concentric grooves and cracks on the surface. The color of the mushroom body can be black-gray and matte with grayish edges, and the inner part is brown.

Real tinder

Polypores inhabit almost all deciduous trees, including apple and pear, and mainly on weakened and dead plants, as well as on their stumps. When damaged, it causes pith, light yellow or white rot, and the wood in the affected area becomes brittle, stratifying along the annual rings. Like the previous one, this tinder fungus is perennial, hoof-shaped and has similar grooves on the surface. The color of the mushroom is pale gray with dull light yellow edges.

Flat polypore

It settles mainly on stumps, but it can also appear on growing apple trees, pears, plums and other trees. Fungus infection occurs most often through wounds at the base of the tree and on its roots, and it then spreads up the core of the trunk, causing it to yellowish-white rot, drying out and brittleness. The fungal bodies of the tinder fungus are perennial, flat, and the upper side is wavy, furrowed, sometimes covered with a brown bloom with a rusty-brown color along the edges.

Yellow tinder fungus

Most often, the tinder fungus settles on cherries and, somewhat less often, on pears, cherries. The fungus causes a brown heart-shaped rot that spreads throughout the tree in a fairly short time. Fungal bodies are initially watery-fleshy, and then hardening and brittle. The surface of the mushroom bodies is wavy, light yellow or orange.

Plum tinder fungus

It most often settles on the trunks and branches of plums, cherries and cherries, but it may also appear on apple and pear trees. The fungus mainly causes heart-shaped rot of trunks and branches, and sapwood in cherries, and the trunks and branches quickly dry out and break. Fungal bodies are mostly hoof-like, their surface is velvety at first, then smooth, grayish-black. The tissue of the fungus is hard, woody and reddish at the edges.

Scaled polypore

It mainly settles on the pear, causing white heart rot. Mushroom bodies are annual, semicircular, flat on top. The body color is initially light yellow or ocher, and then brown with large scales. The mushrooms are attached to the trunks with a short side leg. If a summer resident or gardener knows the varieties and characteristics of tinder fungus, then he can independently decide on measures to protect fruit trees in the garden from them. Of course, first of all, to prevent the appearance of pest fungi, general agricultural measures should be taken to improve the growth and development of trees: timely and correctly apply fertilizers, fertilize, water, cut trees. But for a more reliable protection of the garden from tinder fungi, special measures should be taken:

  • promptly remove and burn all damaged and drying out branches, as well as exfoliated bark, as they attract tinder fungus to themselves in the first place;
  • cover the wounds in the trees with garden pitch and seal the hollows; for this, they are covered with small crushed stone or broken brick and poured with a mixture of cement and sand in a ratio of 1: 3;
  • coat the stems with clay with casein glue (200 g per bucket of water with the addition of karbofos to the mixture - 90 g per bucket) to protect against flat and other tinder fungi.

If these measures did not succeed in preventing the appearance of tinder fungi, then it is imperative to cut off and burn their mushroom bodies; carry out this operation no later than August, when the release of fungal spores is expected. In this case, all places of the mushroom cuts must be disinfected with 4% copper sulfate (300 g per bucket), and the wounds on the wood after the cuts must be covered with garden varnish. In my garden, I have fought in this way more than once with tinder fungi, and I can responsibly say that such measures, which were discussed above, make it possible to successfully defeat tinder fungi and save trees from death, without resorting to their elimination and burning.

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