Hooples Antique Gold

Grimes Golden is suspectible to cedar rust in my orchard.
I have ordered Hooples Antique Gold and Galarina to try out.

Do the ziplock bags work well in protecting the fruit? If so, great idea. Other cloth fruit bags are available but would be more expensive.

It depends on what you want to protect against.

People have discussed various kinds of bags and bagging methods in several threads including this one.

I generally have trees on hand, and scionwood into July.

Iā€™ve had HAG in the ground for 3 years now, and itā€™s been decimated by CAR every year, to the point of partial defoliation. It puts out a second flush of leaves every summer, so Iā€™m going to leave it in the ground to see what happens. I have probably 100 cedar trees within 200 yards of it.

Skipley Farm still has scion of Hooples 3/25/22. But after reading this maybe Iā€™ll graft up all that wood!

My HAG toughed out the CAR much better this year than in the prior two. Maybe itā€™s getting stronger in its age or maybe itā€™s just a low pressure year.

1 Like

In my yard, HAG is about the same as Gold Rush re. CAR susceptibility. Since I grafted it on a Gold Rush tree, they get sprayed together with myclobutanil, 2 spray 2 weeks apart.

Yours may need one more spray.

2 Likes

I donā€™t spray anything. Itā€™s survival of the fittest on my property! lol

4 Likes

Hope you never have to deal with Marrsonina leaf blotch on apples. That is a nightmare. I did not have it until 3-4 years ago. By early fall, no leaves on my apple trees.

2 Likes

No, so far that seems to be an east coast problem only. I only grow disease resistant varieties, and I put this HAG in being told it has moderate resistance to CAR. Iā€™ll give it time to prove itself, but itā€™s not looking great so far.

I donā€™t mind cosmetic blemishes, especially on the leaves. Most of my apples are grown for cider, sauce, and butter, so Iā€™m really not even concerned about cosmetic issues on the fruit either. If HAG just has ugly leaves but produces decent fruit, Iā€™ll call that a success.

I never had CAR make a significant dent in my apple harvest, even when trees looked ugly as sin. I spray for it now though.

1 Like

Thatā€™s great to hear. Iā€™d love to put in Goldrush, but its susceptibility to CAR is whatā€™s kept me from putting it in. If the CAR wonā€™t kill the tree nor ruin all the fruit, I might give it a whirl.

One reason why it doesnā€™t do so much harm is it only affects the leaves out when the spores spread in spring. Later leaves are not infected and so will help the tree keep its vigor.

Note that the amount of damage you get is related to how many cedars you have nearby and winds etc so it could be the infection could be so bad as to do in the fruiting. That said I had trees literally 5ā€™ from huge infected cedars and I still got a good crop from them.

3 Likes

Was it all the trees that suffered badly from the leaf blotch? For me it was definitely some more than others. Goldrush and Ashmeadā€™s were affected the worst.

It started with multi grafted Honey Crisp. It has about 12-15 varieties on it. Most, if not all lost leaves.

Then, a year later, my multi grafted Gold Rush contracted it (next to Honey Crisp). This one has about 6-7 varieties on it. Most leaves were gone.

I cannot remember what varieties were more resistant, if any. The trees pretty much lost their leaves long before the end of a growing season.

My other apple trees are on the other side of the yard. They have not been affected yet. I plan to spray fungicide recommended for leaf blotch this summer.

2 Likes

Will you spray for the leaf Blotch?

Hambone,
This will be the first year I will spray fungicide for summer spray. This article suggested Captan. I will use it.

I used to spray myclobutanil (Immunox) twice at petal fall and two weeks after. That has not stop leaf blotch. The trees needs summer spray of fungicide. I probably will do at least two spray of Captan.

2 Likes

Thank you for sending that article. When do you plan to make your two sprays of captain? I hate to resort to captan but it looks like thereā€™s no choice and still grow gold rush. I have immunox on hand and I might try a June July August spray of that instead of captan. I think alan recommended spraying immunox plus captan.

Here a single spray about July 7th of captan and myclo holds leaf drop back. A second spray a month later keeps it in adequate checkā€¦ so far. Last year I used this at two different, very large orchards that were getting hammered in previous years. I was surprised how much just these two sprays reduced sooty blotch and fly speck as a bonus.

One season, two orchards does not a certainty make, but given the history of both these orchards and the prevalence at both of MLB, Iā€™m pretty confident about it. I already knew a single spray helped a lot.

Remember that myclo has kickback and Cap does not. It also is systemic and last much longer through any weather but especially wet weather. The Chinese have been looking at this disease for a long time and I read a report about myclo being very helpful.

I have recently learned that Topsin M is systemic and am considering incorporating it in my program somehow.

Cornell has not been terribly useful because it is not a problem with apple trees in conventional production, although they are looking at it with the rise of organic ciders in NYS. I think it was 5 years ago that I brought them the first sample of the disease theyā€™d ever seen on an apple tree. After my sample arrived many more came from organic apple orchards.

2 Likes