POSTED: July 13, 2009 by Dianne
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A lot of places have given up selling them because of the insect problems. There used to be a chemical called Cygon that killed the bugs but they banned it several years ago and there is no replacement available so ever since then people just have to watch their trees die. It's a shame.
Birches are notoriously hard to keep pest-free. I have a large clump on my front lawn that I think was planted by the first owner of the house about 23 years ago. It's a beautiful tree but there are some branches at the top that have died off (and they're too high for me to prune). It also tends to lose leaves and small branches throughout the growing season. I plan to have an arborist come in and look at it at some point, but my research points to either birch borer or birch leaf miner as the culprit. I have managed to keep it in relatively good health nonetheless by fertilizing and watering regularly -- it needs really deep watering and does much worse during dry spells, like the summer before last when we were under a watering ban.