I live in the middle of Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) territory. My little city is officially nicknamed Cedar City, in fact. Ergo, tons of cedar-apple rust (and also cedar-hawthorn rust).
I’ve had a Callaway crab for a few years, and it has done fine. So I know that rust-resistant varieties can survive here. (My poor hawthorn tree, OTOH, is a very sorry sight every year!) This year I’ve ordered a Dolgo crab plus Liberty and Williams Pride apples. I’ve looked at Arkansas Black, but did not order one because of its reported sensitivity to fire blight and apple scab. I didn’t order Freedom because it wasn’t available at the nurseries I was ordering from.
So – if you were going to add another apple to Callaway, Dolgo, Liberty, and Williams Pride, in 7a Tennessee surrounded by cedars, what would you choose?
Yes, I have had little CAR trouble out of Granny Smith (but it rots bad), Braeburn, Arkansas Black, winesap, wolf river, …and so many others are fine as I have quite a collection of varieties.
I am cutting some cedars for fence posts, so that should help even more…but I’ve really just had a problem with some obscure varieties.
Possibly steer away from yellow delicious…but the red delicious are
quite resistant.
Thanks! I don’t like the Delicious varieties anyway, but I do like Granny Smith, Braeburn, and Winesap. I’ll do some research on their preferred growing areas.
I have 1 … 20 year old apple tree… and a crab that evidently pollinates it… it produces lots of apples.
It is early mcintosh… and is only mildly affected by CAR.
I am in southern middle TN and like you cedars abound and some within 40 ft of my apple trees.
I have 3 other apples that were 2 yr olds this year…
Hudson Golden Gem… and Akane which were only mildly affected…
And Gold Rush… which was much much worse. It looked aweful…
Some here have said that CAR… may look bad but may not hurt fruit production all that much … may reduce the tree vigor some… which might be a good thing.
My 2 yr GR set a few apples this year but the fruit dropped in Sept… way b4 ripe. Each fruit developed a dark spot where the stem entered the apple… and then dropped. Not sure if that was CAR related or not.
Of my 3 new trees the HGG is the most impressive so far. No fruit yet though… hopefully this next year.
Orange pippin also covers resistance to rust for many cultivars and in many cases the information they provide on rust is draw from University of Arkansas data.
Also – huh. Speaking of that Purdue chart (great chart!), I had forgotten about cedar-quince rust. Although there’s a bazillion cedars here, I guess I don’t have the quince rust locally. I’ve got two different japonica varieties, and I’ve never seen rust on them. But I get terrible rust on my hawthorn tree, so I know I’ve got that one!
In NE Kansas, in our orchard, Enterprise, Liberty, Arkansas Black, Roxbury Russet, Ashmead’s Kernal, and Dolgo crab seem to be immune to CAR. Hudson’s Golden Gem gets spots every year, but they’re usually gone by later in the season. We have tons of Juniper Virginiana. I was wondering if it would help to pluck of the orange fungus balls and destroy them.
Some cedars are more prone to them than others. If you were willing to take out the worst ones, You might be able to pick and choose from the crop of seedlings. There was one Jv selection I think from KS, named ‘Maney’.
it would, also you could spray. but it can spread quite a distance. I was told up to 5 miles, so youre probably better off just spraying the apples or even setting up large fans to keep them dry
Eh, we’re not going to spray. And fans in a whole orchard would be impossible (and silly–we get lots and lots of wind in Kansas.) All of our apples either are immune or highly resistant to CAR, so it hasn’t been a problem.
Interesting idea about taking out the worst of the cedar trees. I actually can point to the trees that always seem to have the most orange alien balls on them, so yeah, we could definitely take those ones out.
