Paul Pugliese.

  • Mushrooms on Trees

    Question: Should I be worried about fungi growing out of the side of my old oak tree? Drought stress, construction injury, soil compaction and girdling roots will injure tree roots and provide an entry point for wood decay fungi. Storm damage, improper pruning, and wounding of trunks and branches also lead to wood decay fungi entry…

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  • Ugly Tomatoes are Still Good on the Inside

    This Saturday, July 27, is the annual celebration of the Tomato Festival at the Downtown Cartersville Farmer’s Market. Activities will begin around 10am and will include a tomato contest for local farmers. The festival has become a favorite event among locals that love to sample different tomato varieties. There are literally thousands of tomato varieties…

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  • Black Twig Borers

    Over the last two years, we’ve received a number of calls from local clients concerning landscape trees that have a lot of branch dieback. Black twig borers or other ambrosia beetles are often involved in these cases.  Stunted or delayed leaf development and rapid wilting in the spring are classic symptoms of these borers. They…

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  • This presentation is geared toward certified arborists, landscapers, master gardeners, and home gardeners that commonly use phenoxy herbicides for lawn weed control. This particular presentation focuses on the potential for phenoxy herbicides to affect non-target trees and woody ornamentals in landscape settings due to poor application choices by professionals. This is an issue that is…

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  • Ground-nesting bees and wasps may alarm people, but they are actually “good bugs” that are busy doing their jobs as pollinators or serving as useful predators in controlling harmful insect pests.  Read More

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  • Kill weedy grasses with mulch and herbicides

    Many clients contact their local University of Georgia Cooperative Extension office frustrated with grasses taking over their flower beds or vegetable gardens.  A common phone call might involve Bermuda grass taking over a bed of juniper ground cover or daylilies. And, if you’ve ever tried to pull Bermuda grass out by hand, you quickly learned…

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  • Annual Tree Checkups

    Maintaining trees is a lot like getting a routine dental cleaning—good, bad, or otherwise.   If you don’t maintain your teeth or have them checked periodically by a dentist, then you run the risk of your teeth having major problems in the long term. Trees share many similarities to teeth. Older trees, especially, should be checked…

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  • Old Trees Bleeding Sap

    Question: There’s an old oak tree in my back yard with sap oozing out. During the summer, the sap was covered with bees and other insects. What’s causing this to happen and is this harmful to my tree? Bacterial wetwood or “slime flux” is a condition in trees that is characterized by the bleeding of…

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  • Fall and early winter are the best time to relocate large trees and shrubs. Moving established plants from one location to another can change your landscape without costing you money. Read More

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  • A Good Year for Peaches

    This might end up being a great year for peaches and other fruit trees in Georgia. That is assuming we don’t have another hard freeze between now and mid-April. Georgia is known as the peach state, although California and South Carolina actually grow more peaches. Georgia, of course, has the best tasting peaches according to…

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