I found some sap, below the graft, leaking from near the base of my apricot tree. It is on Myro. The sap seemed clean and didn’t smell sour. Where the sap was coming from looked like a pruning scar from when the advice was to cut the branch flush with the trunk. (Hopefully that makes sense.). However, I did not notice any suckers coming from the rootstock prior to this.
I do not notice any blackness or overgrowth or any signs of tree disease. In fact, outside of some insects chewing holes in some of the leaves, the tree looks pristine and very healthy.
Also, I found this while inspecting my trees the day after Irma rolled through and dropped about 6 inches of rain, if that is useful info to diagnosing this problem.
So I reseeded lawn close to the peach tree and that area needs daily watering.since my peach tree is only few feet away, I’ve been giving it a thorough watering every other day. You know since I got the garden hose in my hand anyway. But then it hit me that too much of a good thing could be bad. Am I doing more damage than good by watering the tree this much in the fall?
Probably not. It could be raining regularly. Trees are programed to shut down in fall. Heavy water and nitrogen might be an issue. But just moderate water I don’t think so.
Just make sure there is no borer activity near the sap. Poke around and make sure the bark is solid in the area- you can start by using your fingernails to dig in to the bark. You won’t have to really do much damage to establish what’s going on. Usually there will be frass with borers, but not always.
Someone on this forum may be able offer some advice. Screen houses are becoming more popular for reducing pest pressure. One day I plan to have all my vegetable gardens in screen or green houses. I always thought it would be neat to try some of the susceptible species inside of a screen house. How much does wind come into play for the transmission of fire blight? If I were to keep these highly susceptible species in a screen house would fire blight be an issue? Obviously, you would need an in-house beehive or maybe mason bees. The screen house would need to be totally sealed. Of course, any trees with evident fire blight infection would need to be removed from the area, which I do now anyways. In fact, I only play with varieties that don’t have issues.
I thought the same TurkeyCreek, How did my 2nd year planted Williams Pride on G.41, from Cummins that has never bloomed get fire blight? Doesn’t fire blight spread through the blooms? I had a Braeburn with fire blight on MM106 but it bloomed.
My observations about FB is that I have seen it the most in association with bloom time. I have also seen heavy infestations under the bloom area and often spread out a few feet wide when the original infested bloom was not pruned out. Then I have seen areas of FB in random areas that I cant really define any correlation (less of this type).
Burrowing and chewing insects such as cicada can spread it easily when not in bloom. They attach new growth primarily. Old trees won get it in those situations and new trees will.
That used to be the understanding, but FB often infects growing 1-year shoots without starting in the blooms- it is called shoot-blight. I get it frequently but I guess it is less devastating than FB that starts in spring from infected flowers. Usually removing infected shoots is the end of the problem with free standing type rootstocks (M7 and up).
Any reason why some of our apple trees are putting on new growth in early October? It has already snowed once here. I haven’t done any trimming and pretty much have left the trees alone the last few months.
They did this last year as well without any I’ll effects on the next growing season. I was just curious though why they would do this when they will drop their leaves soon anyway.
I had a cherry and pear bloom a few weeks ago and put out new growth - both were stressed badly as they were planted in the middle of a drought. If a tree feels threatened it will put out growth.
The only stress the trees were under was the cold…a few nights down to 26. They did seem affected by it. Now it’s warm again so maybe that’s their way of recovering.
Reading more on grapes it looks like it looks like the PH level is recommended to be between 5.5 to 6.5 for muscadines and 6.0 to 6.5 for others. Looking through the forum I found plenty of topics on PH and Blueberries but none on PH and grapes and using sulfur (to lower the ph) for grapes. What can I expect with grapes if my PH is high 6.7 - 7.2 plus, depending on where I test in my yard?. Lower yields, bad tasting grapes, dead plants, the great grape apocalypse? This the only thing I can find locally to reduce PH -
Apples do tend to get a late growth surge on tips, especially if leaf hoppers were holding growth in check. These type surges can happen to other species for at least another reason, I’ve seen it after long summer drought broken by rain in late August with Japanese plums. The J. plum trees didn’t seem to suffer from the late growth but the shoots themselves were winter killed. Never had late shoot growth of apples even cause that, but unusual late growth and sudden emergence of extreme cold might theoretically pose a problem. I wouldn’t worry about it though, the growth you are talking about is probably normal, especially if you are in a part of the country where the growing season seems to keep getting longer as it does here in the northeast. We just had our first frost which use to normally come in late Sept.
@foothillsgrower5a did you water your trees during our dry spells this year? I had a couple of 3-5 week spells with little or no precip. If you got the same then the recent rain/snow we got might have given them a chance to grow after being in drought stress.
I generally water my trees weekly whenever it isn’t raining during the growing season. And have not seen much if any regrowth lately.