Fireblight strikes last year (2019) was much heavier than it has been this year. It is hard to determine when one has figured out the best prevention method. The only thing that I know of that I did different was to spray my pears with copper/oil at the bud stage. I didn’t spray the apples. As of now I have only had a small amount of strikes on my King David apple and a couple of questionable shoots of Goldrush apple. The million dollar question I would like to know the answer to is why? Although I attempt to do a few things that I hope helps I just don’t have confidence that I can get repeated good results. If I fertilize it is mostly on young trees and this might help but I thinks this contributes to a little smaller ripe fruit. Last year I removed infected branches as soon as possible and this might help slow down the future strikes. Although I only sprayed my pears this year with copper/oil I think this also helps. My close spacing of trees with different bloom dates makes it hard to spray at the correct times. This is some of the things I do to prevent FB strikes but I don’t know if I just had one of the off FB years.
Oh no. I planted a King David and Aunt Rachel this spring . . . So far, no sign of disease. I wrote in another post about the two bad pear choices I had made - Anjou and Bartlett. They are showing signs of ‘something’ that I suspect is FB.
I am a newbie fruit nut - and still very ignorant when it comes to identifying even the most common problems in fruit trees. I’m learning from all of the forum posters . . . Thank You to everyone for sharing all your experiences and advice.
Question for @scottfsmith and @Auburn - or anyone who wants to chime in!
When you remove a fruit tree that has shown consistent problems - do you have to make sure to dig out all of the roots, too? Do they continue to transmit disease? And can the planting ‘hole’ be re-used . . . or avoided like the plague?
I have only had a couple of apple trees die to the roots and I removed the whole trees including any roots that came up with the trunk. Then I replanted with a plum. You could probably replant an apple but I wanted to keep from passing on whatever killed the apple.
After an ideal year for FB on Apples it’s not as bad as I expected since I did not spray copper or any strep this year. First time ever for no FB chemicals.
Also did not cut out any strikes and so far I don’t see any signs of it spreading.
Golden Delicious got clobbered but Pink Lady was not quite as bad.
I am not very careful on removing trees, I usually chop it off at ground level and let that be that. I put the new tree if any a few feet away.
On the original topic of fireblight, this spring there was only one bad stretch when I got some tip strikes. Swayzie was the one variety that got a fair number. Overall yet another mild year for me. Along with removing all the really bad varieties I am pretty good about pulling off any late blossoms which are often where the infection first starts when it hits.
On Swayzie making your list of favorites, I was pretty interested and had been looking all over (including the old references) for information on any disease resistance (particularly FB)… but without much success. It sounds like it may be called some shade of susceptible (I think Pomme Gris is Very Susceptible). Given your experience, how would you rate it for FB and PM? I’m in an area where both are prevalent.
I don’t recall it ever getting really nailed. A couple small strikes doesn’t really register for me.
Note that I have not had severe fireblight for many years, taking out all the really susceptible varieties reduced it to a non-event for me.
Ok, thanks!!
Is that because none of your trees are susceptible to fireblight or because the other trees are no longer a source of inoculant? Basically, were you seeing fireblight on the more resistant varieties before you took out the less resistant ones?
I was seeing fireblight on nearly everything before I started culling the worst ones. I expect I culled a few I didn’t really need to but that was the price for solving my problem.
My flowering pear, for some reason, bloomed quite late. Got a spectacular bloom set but looks like it’s getting a bad case of fireblight. I grafted Hosui to a sucker but it got a strike today. I pruned it off but am not too hopeful.
As of now I have had a good period of weather and have a good set of pears and apples. I’m always a little tense at this time of the year as my pear and apple trees are finishing up the blooming stage. The next few weeks after blooming is when I tend to see FB flare ups. My strategy post bloom is to immediately break off any infections. Although my method isn’t even close to being perfect it appears to keep from killing whole trees. My other approach is eliminating varieties that seem to be the most susceptible to FB. I almost forgot to mention that I remove late blooms which in my case tends to more easily get infected.
I spent hours searching for and removing cankers this winter, did two sprays of dormant copper, trying to prune all my susceptible varieties to open center, spraying streptomycin + regalia alternating with serenade, will definitely remove late flowers as that always corresponds with more heat and humidity. We’ll see how it looks this year, as some of my apples are just entering their bloom stage. There’s going to be a 10 day period where I can’t get to the orchard in late April/early May that could be a disaster.
Can anyone provide notes on which varieties of asian and european pears are more likely to get fireblight and which are more resistance to fireblight based on your growing experiences? So im looking for recommend on which varieties to grow and which to avoid. thank you!
I think different results are gotten at different locations so I think your best list of resistant varieties will come from growers nearby. Two pears that I have grown before and had severe fireblight problems are Bartlett and Anjou. At my location Ayers, Orient, Kieffer, and Harrow Sweet have performed well. I do okay with Korean Giant but I normally have to remove a little FB from it every year.
My fireblight rule: avoid growing any pear you see at the grocery store; (Anjou, Bosc, Comice, Bartlett) and focus on ones you’ve probably never heard of: Potomac; Harrow Sweet; Blakes Pride; Warren; Moonglow.
@LADPT
Just the blackened tip of the one is questionable as fireblight but just prune that tip off. Pears like that can also look like something they are not when it’s that small. Sometimes pruners crush some wood. The leaves are not fireblight. That’s a good looking tree! If you see lesions up and down a new pear like that it’s for sure fireblight. The thing is fireblight is always there it’s like bacteria in our stomach. Spray those new trees with copper asap just once or twice for the year. That copper eliminates most fireblight before it gets started. Fireblight prone areas are really bad if not sprayed with copper.
The lists are ever changing but most are documented in one spot or another on here. Here is a place to start Pear tree Fireblight research so you dont have to but that thread was started 7 years ago.
Thank Goodness!