Vascular Injection

Tree injection is a PHC tool by which chemicals are delivered directly into the tree’s vascular system using various equipment systems.

An important key to remember with tree injections is that all injection systems require wounding the tree in one way or another and thus should not be used as repeated annual treatments. Injections have their place with certain chemistries that cannot be delivered any other way, most notably fungicides for vascular wilt prevention.

With insecticides, the practitioner has to ask if there is another, non-invasive manner for treatment at this time. If this is a preventative treatment, consider soil application. If the pest populations are high and the tree is in dire straights, injection offers fast efficacy at fairly low cost (depending on the injection equipment used) but should not be the only tool in the box.

The upsides of tree injection are, as mentioned, fast efficacy and relatively low costs as well as limited applicator exposure. The downsides are tree wounding, time waiting for uptake, and often poor distribution of the products in the tree’s conducting systems. With injection systems it is paramount to understand the basics of tree biology so you can perform your applications in a manner that is safe to the tree and efficacious against the target pest.