Hey, looking for some help. Am in the UK/winter my Red Acer (palmatum bloodgood) now has these white balls in its base (see pictures). Should this be a concern? Should I treat this somehow? Thanks for any help on this!
Indeed it does, but I lived here for the past 4 years and never used those types of fertilizers. Also when planting it <1 year ago i did not notices them. Perhaps they had been used by the nursery I bought it from so they came in the plants own soil and not my garden's.
That's better than the other option: snail eggs! Just joking, though it can be hard to tell the difference, that's almost surely Osmocote as @maf says.
Now that you mention that, we have an abundance of slugs in our Garden. How should I treat this before they hatch if they were slug eggs?
This is very likely, nurseries use a lot of these. And they will work their way to the top over the years as the smaller and denser soil particles sink, they might have originally been an inch or two down but are now at the soil surface.
That's Osmocote that came loose from the rootball probably. They should not have any remaining fertilizing value, so you can remove them if you think they are unsightly. Snail eggs are transparant, and these are the typical yellow from Osmocote, so probably not snails.
