Seems like nearly no pictures exist on fireblight in early stages. As i see it frequently thought i would get some photos.
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Thank you for the photos. I haven’t had any yet. 3rd year with trees
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Looks like fireflight is going for the petioles first, severing the leaf/fruit from the tree.
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Once it enters the shoots, it will work its way down the branch on all susceptible varities. If the branch is not amputated quickly within hours or days, it will enter the trunk, killing the tree. In this case, Citron de carmes is the pear. I’m not concerned i will grab follow-up photos. The tree is on a resistant rootstock grafted over 3 feet from the ground so i can easily be back in fruit in 2 years with a resistant variety like harrow delight. I have hundreds of pears so an experimental tree being hit with blight is to be expected. If not prepared, this can be devastating to the home orchardist. In this case, there is no doubt the tree will die it has hundreds of strikes in the last day. I will experiment on it later with a 50/50 white vinegar solution. The leaves will turn half black, and the tree will look bad. Have saved 5 full trees in this way, but more testing is needed. Usually it never gets so far as to infect an entire tree. Vinegar is a herbicide and an antibacterial. The question everyone would ask is if it works, why wouldn’t everyone do it. Does it really work is the question? It has for me but i will test it again. Pear tree Fireblight research so you dont have to
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For me, timing has been crucial. I walk through pretty much every day. If I remove the strike the day I see it, things go pretty well. I am lucky to have never lost a tree to fireblight although I have had it on quite a few trees. I took out the longest section on a red delicious and a dwarf multigrafted Asian pear. The apple was largely due to hesitation. The pear just had nothing left to give once I took out the strike.
The vinegar idea is interesting. I can remember spraying a tiny bit of isopropyl on the cut end of the apple. It turned black in color on the tip but never progressed. I’m not sure why alcohol turned it black. Perhaps that tissue died.
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This is one reason I want to keep shorter trees, making management much more easier.
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If it’s a small strike I have found they don’t really need to be removed, in other words in the past I let them be and nothing bad happened to the tree. The only time I lose a tree to fireblight is when there is a low watersprout infected which then infects the roots. Or a strike directly on a larger branch, but that is rare. Now I make sure all the low sprouts are removed.
This year I had a lot of blossom strikes on my apples and there were enough that I cut them out just to be safe and to get all the FB out of the trees before it spread more. My Seckel also had lots of blossom strikes. The other pears had little damage. This has been the worst fireblight year here in at least a dozen years, there were some ideal conditions several weeks ago.
Re: the look of fireblight, it can have many different looks depending on stage, strike location, and weather. One key early warning sign is a slightly bent shoot tip which is ever so slightly tan in color.
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have noticed the same thing as scott. i have a much smaller sample size though
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