When should an austrian pine be pruned?
Prune only in dry weather and only when necessary — Diplodia and Dothistroma spores move in moisture, so pruning a wet pine spreads the disease you were hired to control. Ohio State's protocol is to cut at least two feet below visible symptoms and disinfect between cuts, and to collect old cones, because second-year cones carry the fruiting bodies that reinfect the tree each spring.
Reading austrian pine before you cut
Browning runs bottom-up and inside-out with stunted new candles and resin-soaked shoot tips, and the confirming sign is black pinhead fruiting bodies on the underside of second-year cone scales; Dothistroma looks different, showing brown to reddish bands across the needles with dead tips beyond the band, lower crown first. Normal autumn shedding of interior second- and third-year needles is neither of those, while a whole tree browning in a single season points at pine wilt nematode, which Morton lists as a fatal pest and which no treatment reverses.
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