In your experience are leaves retained in winter on apple branch tips a sign of blight in every case or only sometimes?
In the past I always automatically removed all such branches down to at least two or three year old wood. But this year I don’t find any blight cankers or shepherd’s crook twigs in these trees, so am not sure.
No not at all sometimes a late grafted tree keeps its leaves and they turn brown. Make sure to look for cankers and spray everything down with copper.
Never, in my climate.
This year many trees had all the leaves freeze on and they’re still there. So that can be a factor.
For many years, decades really, the mummified leaf at tip of apple branch in winter has reliably signaled blight once I take a closer look. Even a mummified apple stem (or apple) hanging on in winter is a red flag for me.
I hope this isn’t always the case. My trees have held leaves a lot longer than I expected. I chalked it up to a hard summer prune due to suspected hits causing excessive growth at the wrong time. I was concerned about cold damage. I guess I can add another concern to the list.
Apparently a FB clue only sometimes.
I have quite a few like that this year as well
I find the leaves stay on shoots that had extra vigor during the growing season, e.g. a new graft on a big root or similar. I don’t associate it with fireblight at all.
The main clue for fireblight in the off season is black marks on the trunks or shoots. Those get a nice blowtorch treatment if big, and pruned off if small. Currently I have almost no fireblight in my orchard, many susceptible varieties were culled and I am getting plenty of sun in by pruning.
Do you torch the branch thats infected before you cut it?
I just cut and toss in the trash.
For blowtorching just make sure you do one side only otherwise you will girdle the tree. That reminds me, I need to get out and blowtorch all my black knot soon.
That confirms it- I’ve got fireblight hallucination syndrome, seeing it everywhere… call the home.
