Hi All, Never mind the chastisement for planting Dwarf Alberta Spruce, I've read the posts on this site and now know how unreliable they are. That being the case, I already had planted two (one on each side of the porch) last year, which look quite smart. I have planted and lost a couple Albertas years ago before, but these survived the winter and produced lots of new growth in the spring. Now, however, the dreaded browning has begun. I noticed on the left one, at the bottom on one side, browning. Also when the new growth came in in the spring, which was lush, I noticed the 'inside' of the bush was fairly dry-looking. I used a rather odd technique for keeping this 2nd attempt at dwarf Albertas alive. A couple nearby Rhododendron bushes I had planted clearly droop all their leaves whenever they need watering- when I notice this, I water the Rhodes and the Spruces, all together. I have been using this as my 'watering flag'. So picture the layout: The porch with a Spruce on each side, and two Rhododendron bushes on the outer perimeters: Rhode - Spruce - Porch - Spruce - Rhode Today however, I noticed the first brown patch at the bottom of the left Spruce, the foreboding of doom. But my little watering system is stumped and outsmarted! This is why: The Rhododendron bush located on ITS side of the porch, right next to it, looks fine. But the Rhodedendron on the the opposite side of the porch is drooping, saying "Water me!" And THAT Spruce has no browning. To confuse things further, it has been VERY rainy lately, it has rained the last four days in a row off and on. I had also deeply watered all four plants not too long before that rather unexpected rain marathon. So is the bush dying because of thirst, or rotting from overwatering and all the rain? Both appear to cause the browning. The raining hasn't been heavy, just sporadic. But from experience with Alberta Spruces, the browning is almost 50/50 a death pronouncement. Have no idea what to do............
An update on the Alberta Spruce Mystery: Upon closer inspection, BOTH of the Alberta Spruces have dry and shedding leaves in the INSIDES, and are somewhat browny on the bottoms. They have a few green buds on top. But the left one looks like it is preparing for a brown-out. I guess maybe these bushes have a 'suicide countdown' programmed into their genes.....might be a marketing ploy to sell more of them as replacements. sigh...............!!!!
I got the strangest surprise. I did the 'mite test' on the browning dwarf Spruce, shook the branches in the browning area over white paper. And what fell out? A bunch of these wierd bugs I have never seen before! There were two kinds, very very small. The first were shaped like little little tiny 'heat bugs', if you have ever seen those in your attic they resembled them. Long oval bodies pointed at each end, and two antennae in the front. They ran around pretty fast. The other kind of bug looked like little tiny round red blobs with legs, like itty bitty red spiders, although there were less of those. Not so many as would be called an 'infestation', but three whacks over the paper I got about 6 on the paper each time, and maybe two of the red spider blobs. So....are these alien critters parasites, or are they eating the mites? ?....?....?....?....?....?
Any takers for my strange bugs? I looked all over the Web, for Alberta Spruce parasites, and nothing..........
OK Kids- here's a pic of my martian bugs, after whacking the branches over paper. Note that it is mega-magnified (6 Megabyte digital pic), they are about 2-3 times smaller than they appear in the picture. The one to the left is the tick-like red spider bugs, they are about the size of a dot, but very fast. The other ones are long and thin and each has a little pair of antennae on the front like a "V", although you can't really see it in the picture.
