Good morning my friends. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience! If possible, I would like to ask a question!
I have some apple trees on MM106 rootstocks that started with these lesions in the grafting area on mau of 2022. The terrain is a little poor and the winter is quite rigorous, in which it Rained a lot and the land was a little soaked. Summer was also quite dry!
I ended up putting these trees in isolation and I planted others in their place, this in February of this year.As I think it could be a nutritional deficiency, I added an 8-12-12 fertilizer to the new planted trees, a 4-10-5 Liquid Rooting and also added horse manure.
Two of the new trees I planted, Belchard Chantecler and Blanik, started with this type of damage again at the graft junction. What do you think it could be?
normally i would not be to worried about a less than beautiful looking graft union.
Do the tree’s show any other symptoms? or are they healthy and grow as normal? Or profusely flowering?
I have never seen it in real life. But i know that MM106 is susceptible to some virusus (tomato ring spot or something like that) that can cause apple union necrosis.
might be worth looking into the symptoms of that and see if they match with what you see.
Also you say you planted other tree’s in their place after putting them in isolation.
Some diseases/virusus can stay behind in the soil for a while. Thats why it’s recomended to swap genus when replanting on the same spot if you suspected disease.
So don’t plant another apple or pear on a spot a possibly diseased apple tree was. But rather a plum cherry or apricot. Or even better, out of the rosea family, like a pawpaw kaki or fig.
Good night, Oscar. Thanks in advance for your reply. It’s a situation that worries me.Before planting the apple trees again, I left an open hole for 1 month and disinfected it with sodium hypochlorite!
They are all recent apple trees, so it’s not good to see the issue of growth. But apparently the grafted part (intended variety) is completely healthy!
I would even consider planting another type of fruit tree, but it is a land with apple trees in a row (small apple orchard -50 apple trees).
bleach does nothing but horrible things in the garden. Only realistic use for it is to disinefect already cleaned plant pots.
Using it directly on soil does NOT disinfect it. Bleach brakes down rapidly when it comes in contact with organic matter. And than releases toxic gasses.
bleach leaves behind salt. And thus i would not be surprised if you new tree’s don’t thrive. Their new roots will likely meet a higher concentration of salt at the edge of the planting hole than they can handle. You could overwater a day to wash away some of the salt.
with chemicals, when in doubt. Better to do nothing, than something wrong.
i hope this does not come of over critical. In the end there should not be any permanent damage.
