In my area, central MA, three main apple diseases are scab, CAR and fire blight.
If you don’t plan to spray, you should pick the varieties that are resistant or immuned to these diseases. Fortunately, there are several such apples to chosse from.
If you check on line nurseries like Adam County Nursery or Cummins Nursery, they list disease resistant varieties. I am not strictly organic. I try organic methods when I can. If it does not work, I use chemicals as needed.
There are several threads and many posts about organic vs non organic. I think you should do what you want to do.
I start with disease resistant variety like William’s Pride. Then, I have Honey Crisp and Gold Rush. Then I want to expand so I care less about disease resistant but more about taste.
Check out Scott Smith’s apple report, you will learn a lot from his report.
Matt:
Do you know the reason behind cutting the fruits off of a tree the first year that it bears? I’ve been cautioned about that with both plums and pears and have also gotten the impression that if left on especially if loaded branches, it can damage the tree for life or change the quality of future fruit.
Maureen, I would say in Maine its not all that hard to grow apples organically, if you don’t mind some cosmetic damage. Do make sure to get scab resistant varieties as scab can be a big problem there. The hardest part is getting the Surround down to keep the curculio and moths at bay, it is something that takes experience and is not nearly as straightforward as a poison spray. Michael Phillips’ apple book is a good starting point, he is in New Hampshire so has a similar climate. Under the Guides category here there is also my low-impact spray schedule which gives my summary approach.
Maureen, others may know more about the issue of picking fruit off of a young tree, but I know some things about it. I doubt it will have much impact on fruit quality years out, but others might know something I don’t. What can be an issue is that young trees that have not reached production size will get there faster if they are not investing energy in fruit production. Something to consider is that many species alternate between root growth and shoot growth. In other words many fruit trees will have two or three flushes of above grown new growth followed by periods where the new growth appears to take a break. Actually that’s when the roots are flushing.
Here is the catch. For many species your best fruit growth lines up with the pauses in shoot growth as well. For a small tree with lots of fruit, your tree is investing energy in fruits when they should be investing in roots. That can result in the tree being slow to reach its full production potential. If over cropping is so bad early on, the result could be a relatively small root system. The availability of micro nutrients does impact fruit flavor, and it’s possible that if you don’t get adequate root growth during the formative growth stages of the plant’s life cycle, the result could be that the roots don’t quite spread out enough to access all the micro nutrients needed for optimal fruit production. God bless.
I would think Coastal Maine is quite different than inland New Hampshire, both in terms of weather extremes and the roster of pests. I expect both scab and PC would be a larger factor there on the coast. Actually Phillips is in such a cold spot that his orchard has no plum curculio at all, at least at the time he wrote The Apple Grower. Nevertheless, the book is written for all humid region apple growers and that book should be a useful resource, just not as useful as scottsmith.
Hi, I am new here and from Marblehead Ma and I would like to grow things people say I can’t. Zone 6b. I could really use some encouragement. Another member on here just let me know that most of what I JUST planted will only grow in California. Can I send you my fruit tree names and maybe you will say otherwise? I would love to know your spray and prune timing. Not too many New Englanders here.
Colleen
Hi Colleen, rather than putting this question on an old thread about plums in Maine, start a new thread or put it on the previous thread you already started.
I thought it would be fun to revisit this one for an update, I’ve added in a few new ones and now they’ve started bearing. These are the early Japanese hybrids I have Oblinaya Lavina and Purple Heart
JesseinMaine, for Oblinaya Lavina, is it freestone or semi-freestone. Kind of looks like the flesh is a bit firmer and pulling away from the upper left plum but a bit hard to tell. How is flavor compared to your others?
