Cox is still one of my favorite apples and I had the best crop ever this year. I sprayed Rally twice 10 days apart after petal fall then captan about every 10 days to 2 weeks until the end of the summer. Still, half my crop is destroyed by scab.
Plans for next year? Maybe open up the canopy and prune much more this winter.
Maybe rotate another fungicide? Any suggestions?
All of my other apples are totally free from scab.
Thanks
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Maybe it’s not scab? I’ve no idea.
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It is scab no doubt. Cox is one of the most scab susceptible varieties
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Have you considered bagging some/all of the fruit? For a favorite variety, it might be worth a try, and if it works, worth the trouble.
Another option might be to look into a less scab-prone variety in the Cox family. I think there’s a thread on this subject somewhere on the forum.
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Does bagging fruit help with scab?
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According to some of the sources I’ve looked at, it can. For example:
Infection can also take place before the stage when you would be bagging apples:
But bagging could potentially prevent or reduce later infections.
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Plastic zip-top sandwich bags certainly helped to reduce sooty blotch and flyspeck on my apples this year. Not a COP, this is Mutsu:
Left was in a mesh/organza bag, right in a plastic bag.
Good luck.
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I keep looking at putting a Mutsu in my orchard. How are they where you grow them?
I am also looking at putting a COP in my orchard as well. Interesting difference between bagged and not bagged.
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Yeah I was surprised to see the difference in the two types of bags. Same for Jonathan, Stayman, Honeycrisp, etc… Organza/mesh bags kept the insects at bay as well as plastic, but plastic was definitely better for surface/fungal growth.
I’m actually not a big fan of Mutsu. I had a sister-in-law that loves them and mostly planted it for her. They’re not “bad”, I just find others better and gravitate towards them. They grew reasonably well this year, perhaps 15 apples on a 7yr old tree on M111. They were rather small though, I’ve seen considerably larger for sale at produce stores.
Lots of "COP offspring but many folks rave about how good it is, even saying they like it over many of those others. I don’t have it, might just have to add it as well…
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That is exactly how I feel about Mutsu. It is an okay apple. When they are big they make great apple dumplings. The one grocery store used to carry the very large Mutsu apples. I have not seen them in the grocery store in the last two or three years. That was the only reason I bought them. Without them being big they were just okay. Nothing like WOW. That was the only reason I was going to grow a Mutsu apple tree. I was afraid I was just going to get small/medium sized apples. So if the apples are just smallish I will pass on wasting space on an “okay” apple. I can put something else in that would be more enjoyable of an apple.
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Others mentioned growing cop offspring and I do that but I still find cox superior. I currently have Kidds, Rubinette and KDS bearing and lots of others that aren’t bearing yet.
So far Kidds is a disappointment. It’s like a really good golden delicious so far although it’s the first year with a good crop.
Rubinette is really good but different, also inconsistent. Some years great, some not quite as good.
KDS is very intense, probably the most intense apple I have ever had, sometimes too much.
Cox is still my favorite but it’s by far the most difficult of all my varieties.
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