Advice needed to save my blue spruce?

linni

I have a really old blue spruce, about 10 foot high, which has brown spots all over it and covered in what looks like coaldust. I've looked in my gardening books and can't find what it is. Last year I chopped off loads of what I thought were diseased branches and sprayed it but this year it is back with a vengance and I really don't know what to do to save it.

WestonDave

If you want to put photos up you have to load them up onto the internet to somewhere like Photobox and then provide a link from there - you can't show them on the C drive on your computer (not least because we'd then all be able to see everything else on your computer.

westiea

Sounds like it could be Sooty Mould from an increasing problem in the UK from Great black spruce bark aphids (Cinara piceae)

I would blast it with a hosepipe to wipe off the mould then when dry spray with an insecticide spray if you can.

linni

Thanks, i'll blast/spray it again today. It does look like the ones in your links, and the needles are dropping off, but the black stuff is powdery not sticky. Last year it had loads of these little black bugs, with orange dots on their backs, and the spraying got rid of them, but there's no sign of them this year.