I planted a summer delight aprium in spring 2020. This is the first time it’s really fruiting. For the most part, I think it looks healthy. But some of the fruit have weird moldy patches near the stem. It occurred on 7 fruit out of hundreds. I picked all the moldy fruit I could find and threw them away, but I have no idea what caused the mold or what I can do to fix it.
I don’t know if this info is helpful but I keep my tree pruned to around 8 feet. Because the tree hasn’t fruited before, I don’t really have a rigorous spray schedule yet, because I don’t yet know what it needs and when. So I only sprayed it with a mix of neem oil and copper right before the flower buds started to open. It’s pretty heavily loaded with fruit right now, and I haven’t thinned (again, cause I wasn’t sure how much to thin and when) so many of the fruit are touching their neighbors. Some pics for reference:
It’s kind of hard to see the fruits on the above pic cause, from that angle, they look the same color as the leaves. But they’re there.
And the above is a pic of the overall tree, in case poor pruning/shape might be a factor
Any thoughts on what might be causing the moldy fruit, and/or how to fix it, would be much appreciated! Thanks!