SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – A wet spring and three years of summer drought has created “the perfect storm” for dull fall colors and premature dead trees this season.
John Ball, a professor and forestry specialist with SDSU Extension, said this will be a bad year to see the fall colors in South Dakota. The wet spring invites diseases and the dry summers and falls are causing the leaves to die and drop early.
“Here we had a lot of infected leaves that were beginning to decline and then the water shut off,” Ball said. “The leaves are dropping because of the drought. So it’s really two punches. First of all, the leaves were not going to have a good fall color because of all the diseases. And then added to that, the drought is causing the leaves to drop.”
The summer drought from the last two to three years, depending on the part of the state, has stressed the trees out to the point where the tops of birch, maple and honey locust trees are completely dead.
“In other words, they dry out well for two years, they went into the winter dry to begin with,” Ball said. “Then during our mild winters, the slightly warmer days and the windier days, all that water was just wicked out of them. When that happened, the tissue died.”
To hopefully prevent more dead tissue and leaves dropping during next season, Ball recommends people start watering their trees now because it will be too late by the end of October and early November.
“It’s a myth that you wanna give them a good drink just before winter, that’s not going to help them,” he said. “They need the moisture now so they can prepare for winter. Water them even if the leaves have already dropped.”
Bryan Peterson, an urban forestry specialist with The City of Sioux Falls agrees. He said the city’s main preparation to winterize trees is giving them adequate water and suggests property owners follow suit.
“If you want to water your trees, you gotta give that area a deep soak in order to get that water to percolate down to where the roots can actually access it,” Peterson said. “…They can drag your hose out to the tree, just crack the hydrant a little bit so it’s just a trickle coming out of that end of the hose and let it run for an hour or two.”
Peterson said smaller trees need three to four years to get established and before that, they’re less drought tolerant and more susceptible to desiccation. For those trees, Peterson suggests using large tree watering bags that continuously drip onto the new tree’s roots.
To help prevent diseases from prolonging until next season, Ball recommends instead of raking fallen leaves from infected trees, shred them in the lawnmower during the last few mows of the year and the spores will be killed to keep them from spreading.
“What that does is then they decompose and they won’t release spores next year,” he said.
Although this won’t be the best year for fall colors, the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department has set up a map to track the changing leaves across the state.
The 2024 South Dakota Parks Foliage Tracker is now available.
