Knowledgebase
Apple and plum tree care #845028
Asked August 09, 2023, 10:03 PM EDT
Wayne County Michigan
Expert Response
Sorry for the delay. My laptop is having problems with the heic file extension used by your photos. Would you be able to upload these as jpg? If not, I have a work-around, but it's a bit tedious for this many images.
Could you tell me what herbicides have been used by you or your neighbors earlier this year? That would include weed and feed lawn products, Roundup, or any other products used to control the growth of weeds. Herbicide injury is one possibility to explain the cupping and burning of the leaves. There are also insects and diseases that could produce similar symptoms, but the sudden onset across multiple species makes me want to rule out herbicides first.
Besides the possibility of drift from spraying, several of the herbicides commonly used can volatilize under the right conditions, meaning that they can transfer off of the target plants and disperse into the air in the hours or days after application, causing off-target damage to trees and other plants.
I do recommend you reach out to the nursery you purchased from. It is often helpful to have conversations with a few people to help zero in on the problem. MSU also has a Plant and Pest Diagnostics Lab that can perform a complete plant health analysis for a nominal fee. Information is here: https://www.canr.msu.edu/pestid/
There are a number of things going on with your trees, with the images suggesting both insect damage and leaf scorch, and possibly disease. However, most young trees can tolerate quite a bit of insect and disease pressure when they are healthy. I would guess that your trees are still under stress from planting, which makes them more vulnerable to other problems. If you would like to continue our conversation, I would ask you to describe to me in detail how you planted and cared for the tree, from the time of purchase up until the present. From that, we may uncover the underlying stressor.