I prune when I get around to it, rarely in the rain since I’m usually inside then. Looking it up Here’s a Michigan guide that suggests to wait until it’s dry. They also say in a more mature orchard that waiting until the winter is fine. I’ve seen things like that before and it causes me to be in no big rush to prune it out. I also don’t prune 12 inches below, a couple inches is OK for me. I do eventually prune it out. Infected spurs I just rip out with my hand.
Maybe I’m too blasé about it but I haven’t had too much FB with my approach. Of course now that I write this I’ll probably get decimated this year
Apples and pears flower at different times. Isn’t it possible that a few bees strolled through covered in it at that moment? That would explain why one fruit got it and not the other.
I think all that warm/cold stuff also had the PC in a little bit of disarray. With the exception of apricots it was the early flowering stone fruits that survived the freeze the best here. I didn’t bother wasting spray this year and it’s minimal PC damage.
After an unseasonably dry spring, this rain the last few days has brought a crazy amount of disease to my orchard (CAR and Frog-eye). My Zestar, which has looked to be my most promising tree, has Frog-eye pretty bad, and other trees are starting to get it relatively mildly.
Any thoughts on next steps? I assume it is already too late? This tree has 7 pieces of fruit on it that have not been touched just yet, but really do not want to lose them. Is that inevitable?
I think the recommendation to cut it out of young trees ASAP is because if a young vigorously growing tree has a shoot infection, they’re considering the tree sort of lost and you’re removing stuff to protect the nearby trees that are also young and growing. And they’re thinking of tightly spaced commercial plantings. If the tree lives, that’s nice.
One of the more recent studies said that cutting FB out of more mature, further spaced trees is actually a good idea if there are only a few strikes on the tree - those are more likely to live and just cutting a few things isn’t going to result in the tree pushing more growth. If there are a lot of strikes on the tree, they say don’t cut till winter.
Most of those studies are from apple orchards in US and pear orchards in Israel.
All of that said, whatever strain of fireblight I have at my house is an insane killer of Asian pear. This is just an anecdote and only involves three trees, but it is cautionary in that FB can spread pretty quickly. I went out of town for a couple weeks last year and came back to 3 mature 20 year old pear trees where the top half was completely black.
For two, I cut the top 15 feet off as soon as I got back. I cut about 1.5 feet below visible fireblight. The trunks looked okay and this year I’ve grafted to those and they seem fine.
One which was quite isolated, I left until winter. When went I went to cut it, the whole thing was killed down to the rootstock.
I have actually lost count of how many Asian pear trees I have removed and how affected they were. Whatever strain I have seems to really punish the Asian pears while just taking out shoots on the other pear trees.
Spray with something like Rally. It’s not going to repair those spots but it can keep stuff from spreading and it has some kick-back. So if there was an infection episode in the last day or two it will deal with that.
I’m almost sure some were Korean giant. Also there were Hosui and then a green one- I’m not sure what that was or that I ever managed to taste a ripe one.
Curious if you have ever tried organic alternatives like Bonide Sulfur spray or lime sulfur spray? I assume they are just less effective, but I am fruitlessly trying to stay organic.
I wrote a long message but I think you already know the answer. Sulfur isn’t going to fix this.
The organic fixes are prevention based - you have to protect the leaves and fruit from spores.
You can have no spores around or you can have something on the leaves that disrupts the spores. However, organic stuff will wash off with this much rain and sulfur isn’t effective against black rot anyway.
All this rain is doing my Carmine Jewel (and elsewhere Juliet) cherries no favors. After complaining about drought I’d like to complain about rain… guess I’m the never happy gardner. The plants are pretty floppy and the cherries are very watered down in flavor. I’ll wait a week before really harvesting, since they are always better the darker they get, but I don’t know if the flavor will intensify much.
I usually don’t have a lot of issues with birds on these, which I’ve previously thought might be because they are quite sour when the first turn color and maybe the birds sample and give up on them. But with the watered down flavor the bird strikes are definitely worse. I may need to net if it continues.
And at least 10% of the ripe ones are spliltting so I probably need to pick those off when things dry up so they don’t become a starting point for rots, etc.
It was such horrible timing for the rain to finally start and not stop! I’m sorry about your cherries. They look like my serviceberries. It’s hard not to complain when it seems like we are always living in worsening extremes for spring through fall! Plus, complaining about the weather is an ingrained part of living in the DMV
Sprayed apple and pear yesterday when it wasn’t supposed to be raining. Of course there was a small rain shower while I was spraying! Then, it started raining again 2 hours after I was done!
In the past, it’s actually been helpful even if it rains right after, so hopefully there was some benefit.
The unrelenting, dreary wet needs to stop! Disease is appearing everywhere. My tomatoes even all have blight on them, which is insane. I normally see some spots in July, and it’s eliminated with pruning.
Can never just be a decent in between with rain! All or nothing! This is my own fault, but I forgot to take away the little plate I had under my apricot seedling and it got totally waterlogged with all the rain and just sitting in moisture. I hope all is not lost, that was a fun experiment with stratifying in the fridge. Everything else seems okay so far.
Really interesting timing of this post, I picked up a big Carmine Jewel cherry from a local nursery over this past weekend. I’m really excited since I wanted to get into the bush cherries. Thank you for posting your experience with these! Despite the challenges, you have a wonderful looking set of fruit!
