This spring's dry weather will be especially detrimental to landscapes installed in the last two years. These plants have not yet developed extensive root systems to search for water in extended dry periods. Unless customers have been watering regularly and deeply, expect the loss rate to be high. Many fail to become established due to lack of soil moisture. Spider mite populations blossom with the hot, dry weather of July.
Spider mites are generalists that feed on a large number of landscape woody and herbaceous plants.
Large populations of spider mites were found on prostrate junipers during the droughty summer of 1995 so check plants carefully and regularly. As the mites feed, they create wounds on the needles that serve as entry points for summer infesting diseases such as Kabatina tip blight, Kabatina juniperi. Kabatina requires a small wound to invade the plant. Mite feeding provides plentiful wounds. A small, ash gray canker is produced at the wound site.