Does anyone have experience with Goldrush and fire blight? Do you have reason to think it’s fairly resistant to blight?
I think GR has good resistance to fire blight and most other diseases. I think it’s only knock is that it’s susceptible to CAR.
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The trees I put in this year have not got FB yet.
Hi ! I don’t have personnal experience with blight on my GR. Here is information from Omafra (Ont. Can): http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/98-013.htm
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ARS’ data is consistent with what @jessica4b posted, “Moderately resistant - only light rating” on this scale.
Even in bad years in my location, my GoldRush tree has not had a strike.
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no fb problems in Dallas, but the gr 20-30ft from a row of cedars got car really bad
That’s a handy chart. How does Liberty taste? Looks like it has excellent disease resistance properties.
I wish I’d know! I planted Liberty as well… I asked every grower I met since I planted it (which is only about 4 people) and no one grew it.
I have one on EMLA.111 and another on G.935. No blight strikes yet. Some foliar rust.
The EMLA.111 tree gave me 3 flawless apples last November. It set 9 more this spring, but they all fell off in the June Drop.
The trees are 2nd and 1st leaf, post-transplant, respectively.
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Here are some charts showing disease resistance.
See page 34: http://agrisk.umn.edu/cache/ARL01491.pdf
https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/BP/BP-132-W.pdf
http://portlandnursery.com/docs/fruits/AppleDiseaseResistance.pdf
You will find that these charts don’t agree 100%, for example the first link shows Roxbury Russet as resistant to CAR and moderately resistant to Scab but moderately susceptible to FB. The second link shows Roxbury Russet as resistant to FB, susceptible to CAR and susceptible to scab. (essentially the exact opposite)
Generally I have found the various online resources to be much more consistent on modern varieties that have undergone controlled study. The heirloom and/or rare varieties are more a collection of anecdotes from different parts of the country with different conditions.
Still more frustrating are books/sites that try to simplify things down to whether an apple is disease resistant or not and don’t even specify to which diseases…
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I have had no FB strikes on gold rush, liberty, and Williams pride. I had serious strikes on Priscilla, king David, and ark black - cut out a couple branches on each. But after only one year of flowering, I can’t rule out random chance to explain the pattern of FB strikes. I’m under high FB pressure. Other poms in my area are eaten up bad with FB.
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I never get tired of hearing the good FB news about these varieties neighbor. I have all three plus Ark Bl. Bill
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I have about 75 apple trees. Goldrush is the best, great for cider and juice. Liberty gets too many insects. In my experience, Pristine is the worst for Fire Blight.
Any results for liberty fruit?
Last season was my worst season for fireblight and fireblight is my main bacterial disease. My goldrush has never gotten a bloom fireblight infection but it did recieve a Fireblight infection from Japanese beetles on a spur and even cut back it seemed to affect the trunk. The tree has continued to grow through the infection and was not badly affected from what i could tell. Now that a lower scaffold can replace it i will probably remove the main trunk because i don’t like seeing the discoloration. Anything even slightly susceptible has had a strike or two over the past four years but i never remember more than that on Goldrush. My goldrush is on g202 and i usually need to pick the apples just before they are ripe because of hard frosts in Denver. I have liberty but it has only fruited one time and i did not recieve any strikes on it even though it got munched on by the japanese beetles who spread either that or that and quince rust (Bad enough i cut out the quince first year it fruited very sadly).
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For some reason, I don’t understand my own statement anymore (what did I mean?). I think I meant I didn’t taste Liberty? My tree started to fruit and gave me very good fruits. I like to eat them fresh. They are tart, hard, juicy, with a McIntosh kind of flavour. I guess they would become soft like McIntosh if I was to keep them a couple of months before eating them. The tree doesn’t have any major disease or dieback. Same (no disease/dieback) with Goldrush for now! They both get cedar apple rust real bad… but it doesn’t seem to affect the fruits… Goldrush is biennial. It gave me a lot of fruits in fall of 2017, and none in 2018. I hope I’ll have some this year. They can’t ripen fully here, but are still very good… kind of like all the Granny Smiths apples I get from the store (slightly unripe, but still good)…! ! No fireblight until now
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Liberty tastes a bit like McIntosh, with more acid and more resistance to the tooth when first ripe. It’s a good apple. Needs thinning each June or you get a pile of hand balls. No FB on this, anymore than on GoldRush.
Really! It’s hard to over-thin Liberty. Maybe the most tedious part of growing them.
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