I heard today that the USDA has completed checking all trees withing 5 miles of the yard in Charleston where greening was found, with negative results. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Ned

Great to hear Ned. I'm over 20 miles away from that area and still have not found the bug here.

Thankfully, I haven't seen any psyllids here either Lazz. I imagine they are still in the county, but I have never seen one. The USDA guys talked like the inspection team would be finnishing up in Charleston soon and moving on to Beaufort and other areas. Actually, I believe they said that a new team would be coming out of Florida to work the remaining areas, so that the existing team could go home.

Ned

I have a feeling greening is going to start popping up all over the country as FL is pretty much doing nothing to prevent people from taking plants out of the state and psyllids along with the plants...

there are many citrus relatives that do not look like citrus and serve as alternate hosts to ACP. Some people unknowingly will also bring those plants because they think that only citruses are quarantined.

True on both counts, but I see a positive note here. I was told that the USDA believes the infected tree was in place 3 or 4 years. As Lazz knows, that area has a relatively large number of citrus trees. I was told that no other infectied trees have been found at this point. Based on what I have read about the disease so far, I would have thought they would have found multiple infected trees over a wide area.

I am sure they are also watching the sites where greening was found in Orleans and Washington parrishes. I have heard of no indication of additional infections found there. I know that symptoms do not show right away, but, as I said earlier, I was told that they tested every tree they could find in a 5 mile radius of the Charleston infection, as I am sure they did at the other two sites. I ask if these tests would reveal infected trees that were symptonless, and was told they would. Of course, I am just reading the tea leaves here, but this raises my spirits some.