sooty mold

[BobHawks]

Hi
in our yard we have several fruit trees.  in The back yard a lemon, orange and guava.  This last year they got sooty mold real bad and had mealybugs as well.  I have used treatments but my question is...
How do you keep sooty mold from starting?  reason i ask is that is the first sign and then all the other things show up later, ants, whitefly, mealybugs
thanks Bob

[brian]

Those scale insects are the cause of the sooty mold, not the result of it.  Their sugary waste grows mold.  If you get rid of the scale the mold should go away in time.

I started using a power washer (with a fan-spray, no soap) to blast off scale and sooty mold from my trees, works great!

[zands]

Great idea Brian! I have had limited sooty mold from time to time. I cut off these branches. I never had to cut off anything larger diameter than one inch. They all grew back with no mold.

How about that bacterial spotting that makes leaves die? On mango trees? This is my larger problem. One mango tree shed lots of leaves last month due to this. They all grew back green, the tree now looks nice and green. But having to grow back these leaves takes energy which is better spent making fruits next year.

[brian]

Blasting scale insects and sooty mold from the mango leaves has worked well for me, meanwhile I am treating the armored scale infestation with system imidacloprid.

I am not familiar with bacterial spotting, or its causes & treatment, so I have no advice there.

[Hermitian]

When Citrus are under stress they emit an essential oil which unfortunately is a growing medium for the sooty mold of north America. Licensed applicators treat this with Kocide 3000 and Abound. A good choice for hobbiests is Monterey Liqui-Cop.

Some insect attacks on Citrus can be difficult to control because the nymphs live inside the leaves where they are shielded from non-penetrating and non-systemic insecticides. Spinosad can be a good control for weak insects such as mealybugs and aphids on leaf surfaces and leaf miners (unseen) in new leaves. I recommend pre-emptive applications for the latter. Other pests such as thrip instars and scale that are past the mobile stage require a more stringent approach. Imidacloprid is one of the few effective systemics available to consumers. Licensed applicators cycle through a battery of controls, each of which has a different mode of action. Of particular concern is ACP the carrier of citrus greening disease. Here is a chart enumerating currently available products:
https://plantsthatproduce.com/docs/acp.pdf

[sbtropic]

A strong stream of water will help to take the soot off.

If there are insects that are being farmed by ants like scale use tanglefoot on the banded trunk and encourage beneficial insects in anyway you can. This will fix the root of the problem.

[BobHawks]

thanks for all the info.  but when fruit is present and I spray with the hose I loose fruit and many leaves.  is this common?

[sc4001992]

It's fine if you loose some leaves. If the fruits fall it was ready to be picked. Spray with water as mentioned, its the safest way to clean the tree. Do this 2 x week until you don't see the problem.

[Francis_Eric]

On apple I just eat it first I thought it was pollution , but it is edible
also has been shown tree's that fight off bugs have more antioxidants
(where I got the picture says doesn't afffact storage of apples I do not know of other fruit though

Does it affect storage of citrus or is it just a astetics sort of thing?