The dreaded F word (Fireblight) is showing up in our orchards

When pears bloom is when your the most at risk. Spray copper just before they bloom. You can spray copper now if you want to be on the safe side. Dont get carried away with copper once or twice a year should be plenty of copper. I prefer kocide 3000 becausd i found out its a little better grade of copper.

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Ok. Is this done every year thought. No matter if you have had a problem with fire blight or not? Is there any harm that copper can do to the tree?

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Yes its done every year on pears prone to fireblight. I only spray mine once because copper is a heavy metal. It will not hurt the tree.

Awesome. Thanks. Iā€™m sorry to hear about all the fire blight issues you have had. My grandpa had an old Apple tree that was beautiful. Within one year it died. He didnā€™t really try to save it. He said it was itā€™s time to go and it was almost as old as him. LOL I doubt it because he was 93. I think he was just at the end of life and didnā€™t care to save the tree. But it looked exactly like the other ones in the pictures. What a bad disease.

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All clear so far here on my goldrush. This is my second year of spraying strep on the blooms using the cougarblight model to direct the timing.
I had very few new infections last year and none so far this year, but its still early. I picked off the last of my blooms today and have around 75 apples bagged.

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Thanks for the good report. Its still early for my apples but no fb on them as of now. I have had a few small strikes on my Korean Giant.

I have been checking my Korean Giant pear almost daily for FB. For a few weeks I have seen a few small limbs that appeared infected but they were snapped off promptly. This method appears to at least stop the damage quickly. Although I broke out several limbs I still have a good amount of fruit and the good news is that the strikes have gone down to almost none. I think this method appears to work is from being able to frequently check and break out damage. Another factor is that most of my limbs are within easy reach standing so no ladder is needed. Time will tell how well this works but right now Iā€™m pleased. I donā€™t see how someone with larger planting could be as vigilant but most small growers can check daily especially during peak times.

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A friend here in Maryland just told me his 30 year old Asian pear trees (probably Hosui and Chojiro) got hit so bad with blight that he may lose them. Never a serious problem with them in previous 30 years. Wow!

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I only have two Asian pears but they are the ones that I most fear will get FB.

I got hit this yr for the first time in 40+ yrs in west Texas. Worst on Bosc, a strike or two on KG, and none so far on Comice or the apples. We had some rain this spring, a big bloom, several hailstorms, but a drought by most peoples standards. Iā€™m cutting and breaking out limbs but not much will be left of 15 yrs growth on Bosc.

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@fruitnut
Did you spray with copper? I always spray my non resistant types eg. Clapps favorite.

skunks love junebug grubs here. maybe they like JB was well. :wink:

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No this is the first FB in all these yrs. No reason to spray until now.

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My Pristine apple had a few blooms in late April, no issues there, it actually set a few fruit, which have since disappeared.

But about 2-3 weeks ago, it bloomed again on one upswept branch, way after everything else had done blooming, that seemed very odd. Obviously since nothing else was blooming, there was no fruit set.

But, within a few days the tip of that branch showed the withered shepherdā€™s crook look, and some of the other blooms looked wilty. So, I cut that branch back about 6in below the blooms. Havenā€™t seen any more issues with it. None of my other trees seem to have any FB, but I havenā€™t inspected them real thorough.

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I donā€™t understand why late blooms sometimes appear to get fireblight. Could be temp/weather or length of time from protective sprays. I pretty much quit worrying about the why and just remove the area infected as you did. Catch it early and you can save most of the tree.

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Fireblight?

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sure looks like it!

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Yes

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I had to cut half my pear tree out ( Bartlett) because of FB a few days ago. The rest of my fruit trees look OK, so far. It only took about a week for it to go from curled leaves to being dark brown and dying looking. If it gets any more of the tree I will cut it out entirely and replace it with something else.

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Anybody have less fireblight on Apples in 2019 than 2018? Very surprised that we do!

Our bloom period for apples was very warm and very wet this year. The Maryblight fireblight model predicted almost constant infection for 20 days during bloom but I missed quite a few FB sprays because it was raining so I could not spray. Fortunately, very little fireblight this year. More FB than normal on Pink Lady but not much on Gala or Goldrush. None on Fuji, Stayman or Winesap.

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