I have three asian pear trees. But my 20th Century only was recently badly hit by fireblight.
Is it generally more susceptible??? It didn’t get much at all last year. But we are having a very wet spring, and it never seems to stop.
Any suggestions or advice? I cut off two branches today and the tree is only two years old.
John in 6b kentucky
I’m in zone 9b and my grafts also took off the first year, but then just died off the next one. The other varieties (shinseiki and hosui) are thriving .
Nijisseiki is susceptible to fire blight.
Are you sure its not Fabraea. My 20th Century lost 3-4 spurs to Fabraea. At least at this point it seems like it since the branch has not been infected.
Your best bet is aggressive pruning of any infected wood (8–12 inches below visible damage), sterilizing tools between cuts, and removing water sprouts as they pop up. Once the tree is larger, good airflow and consistent thinning will help, but in young trees it’s always a tough figh
Thank you everyone for you feedback, it killed whole branches for a distance of about 16 inches. I cut all of that off. May have to cut off more.
Right, I will make sure there is better air circulation. We have had tons of rain, but the branches were probably also too close to each other which only added to the problem.
Mini orchard dude, what is a water sprout???
I have Hosui Asian pear, Shin li, and Nijiseiki.
Is there a better Asian pear with good flavor and resistance to Fire blight that I should consider that would also be a good pollinator for the others?
The term :“water sprout” refers to a very vigorous and usually vertical growth.
Last year my two year old 20th Century got severe fire blight. I thought it was a goner, I pruned it severely, taking it nearly back to the rootstock and was planning on either grafting over if it survived or taking it out completely but never got around to it. This year it’s growing vigorously with no signs of fire blight……so far.
My 20th century got hit hard this year with blight. Only about 10% as much on the Anjou pear right next to it. Also got my pink lady apple trees bad this year too. Had bad blight when I moved in, but last 5yrs or so have been pretty good, not sure what changed this year.
What are your other two trees?
The magic weather for fireblight is temps above 60 (above 65 even worse) followed by any kind of dew/rain while trees in any sort of bloom. This year was very bad in our general area because of on and off warm spring temps followed by rain.
Once the FB is present in the orchard, young shoots/new growth get infected throughout the summer if they get any sort of damage (even wind that whips them around can do this - but things like hail or heavy wind is worse)
You’ve already gotten good advice on cutting out strikes & leaving an ugly stub. You then wait till winter and cut off the ugly stub.
If you spray your trees there is a shoot growth controller called “apogee” which hardens off new growth. There’s also something called “actiguard” which apparently helps. I have not tried either of them, but after this year I might.
Next year, if you are feeling ambitious you can spray streptomycin when trees are blooming and risk is high (it has been above 65 F and it is going to rain/dew). Also, If you spray trees during bloom, and it has been warm, you have to add strepto to the mix because spraying is a “wetting event”. Also, you have to spray strepto before rain/dew - it doesn’t work after.
Most of the recent research indicates this doesn’t matter (on a large scale). However, if you only have a few trees then I’d probably still do it. You actually have to dip tools in a sterilizing solution for something like 60 seconds (for 70% alcohol or 1-2% bleach).
I have too many trees and sterilizing between cuts was making things very hard. I did it for a couple years (rubbing alcohol because bleach was destroying my tools) but then I read some studies that by the time you’re cutting strikes, the bacteria are already further down the tree so sterilization didn’t really matter. Now I just do it at the end of cutting strikes in a day - not between cuts.
One more important thing! If you have a young tree like this, which wouldn’t produce fruit anyway (or an older tree where you’re not interested in production that year), remove the flower buds before they bloom.
“Flower removal in young blocks and removal of late blooms limits the numbers of flowers and thus reduces potential points of infection. In two 2020 trials flower removal at pink bud stage for young nonbearing trees reduced infections to zero, compared to 71 to 77 per 100 clusters in water treated [control] and 5 to 17 per 100 clusters in soluble copper treated trees (DuPont et al. 2022).”- WSU’s fireblight page