Organic Tree and Shrub Care

A True organic program uses naturally made pesticides and fertilizers from different plants, and fungi. This can get confusing because most of the chemical pesticides bought at a home and garden store, or a professional applicator uses are called: "SYNTHETIC ORGANIC PESTICIDES" These pesticides are made out of different materials from the earth, but are harmful and dangerous if not handled with caution and correctly.

True organic pesticides have almost no danger to the environment and the people around them. The big theory behind organic tree and shrub care programs in the Spokane, Coeur d alene, and Montana, Washington, and Idaho area is PREVENTION. There is no organic way to kill a beetle that is killing a fir tree or any other conifer. If you have this problem your choices are to treat it with a traditional chemical pesticide or remove the tree.

So, we have to strive for PREVENTATIVE programs that enable the tree to stay healthy and fight off insects NATURALLY. In our organic programs we use many different organic bacteria like: bacillus subtilis, cereus, bacillus laterosporus, and chitinosporus. We use many more than these, but will not boar you with scientific names. The bottom line is that by using beneficial fungi and bacteria, we can encourage the growth of good fungus and bacteria that discourages undesirable microorganisms.

These microbial organisms have spore counts that help balance or tip the environment into a favorable position. This is a PREVENTATIVE. We use Beneficial insects to go after the bad ones. We try to establish a good healthy colony of these insects to prevent the bad insects from doing enough damage to seriously affect a tree. This is a PREVENTATIVE. We fertilize and give the trees and shrubs nutrients to help build their strength to NATURALLY PREVENT insects and disease.

And lastly, we analyze the surrounding the trees and shrubs are in and decide if we can or want to make any environmental changes to PREVENT insects and disease.

Our Organic Program:

• Beneficial insects: we will release beneficial insects that go after the larvae and adult insects that do your horticulture damage. Do you know that one ladybug can eat 25 aphids every day!
  
  On the right is an example of an ant trying to eat all these aphids.
  
  
• Beneficial bacteria and fungi: We release beneficial bacteria and fungi to promote good fungi that bad insects and diseases don't like to be around, and help the tree or shrub naturally grow to its full capability and health.
• Organic fertilizers and nutrients: We make our own mixture depending on your property
• Physical and environmental changes: We might need to do some different things to the environment the horticulture plants are in. This may include removing competing plants that create problems for each other, adding plants that help one another, trimming parts of your plants that are causing problems, removing debris, changing watering cycles, and much more.
• Soil airification and drill composting: This will help with soil compaction and get great nutrients down into the roots immediately for the tree to start absorbing. The tree will feed off these nutrients for years to come (link to page)
• As a last measure, if your trees are struggling with an insect or disease that can't be cured 100% organically, we can use an injection system to put a chemical into the tree. This can be a one-time procedure to stop the deteriation of the horticulture plant. By injecting straight into the tree, we are not putting pesticides into the soil or air. The hope is that by stopping the initial decline and attack of a pest, we can then start a preventative organic program after the trees problems have subsided to a normal level. If your situation deteriorates or begins in this stage, we will discuss the options with you before hand, to see if you really want a traditional chemical application.

Organic Tree and Shrub Care Benefits:

• Nontoxic to people, plants, environment, and animals
• Creates a healthy balance of beneficial and pathogenic organisms
• Creates a healthy balance of beneficial insects
• Stimulates a plants immune system
• Increases the diversity of microbial organisms to give the environment less room for bad organisms
• Restores water holding capacity of soil and plants
• Root masses increase naturally for long term benefits
• Products are made from natural sources
• Green house gases and carbon burning fuel usage is limited in development of organic products, because they are mostly made by natural causes.
• Local economy and small business entrepreneurs benefit the most from these products, because big corporations don't want to take the time and resources to make organic products that canÕt sell as much as traditional products.
• YouÕre doing your part to make the world and environment we pass on to the next generation a healthier and less polluted place to live.

Recent releases of long term studies on horticulture plants in the last few years have made Tree Doctor slowly start integrating organic pest control into its services. For a long time, there was not very conclusive evidence that organic programs actually did any good. This was a moral dilemma at that time. How could we justify telling a customer to go with an organic program if we didn't really know it worked. Tree Doctor has been saving trees for over 10 years, by only using the least amount of chemicals necessary, and only started implementing organic programs over the last 3 years.

It is exciting times as more and more organic products become available with good results. It is our preference to use organic products, for your health and especially for ours since we do this every day! We have had good results implementing organic steps into our traditional, regular pesticide application programs without people even knowing they are getting organic applications. Tree Doctor has long been using concerted efforts to minimalize pesticide use by using selective insecticides and only applying products when absolutely needed. Using the least amount of chemicals is what's best for the trees. We want the trees to naturally be immune to these insects and diseases, and overdoing pesticides makes the trees and shrubs reliant on those chemicals.

As our world keeps changing, we keep on having to make changes about what we value. We are building homes and businesses on land that has never supported commercial types of plantings before. There are environmental challenges that need to be dealt with. Our resources and environment keep on becoming more and more important. Organic pest control is going to be a major change in how we look at traditional pest control over the next few years. More and more people are starting to care about how much gas they have to buy, what goes to a landfill or what gets recycled, whether they get their electricity from a power company that burns coal, or if they have solar panels, if their lettuce or vegetables are going to give them cancer, or if their meat is full of hormones. This is a major change from recyclers looking like environmental whackos 10 years ago. Now it's almost culturally unacceptable not to recycle.

Tree Doctor is proud to be doing our part of helping the environment. By using organic products for those who want it, and by using limited amounts of chemicals for those who don't, we are saving tree after tree after tree. Our trees produce the air we breathe, and we all know how important that is becoming. Why do you think the air smells fresher and cleaner in a forest than in a city. Because trees and shrubs produce air! Tree Doctor wishes to thank those of you, who are concerned enough about the environment to use an organic program.