Did you have a freeze during bloom? It kind of looks like blossom blast. If it’s mainly lower down and not on the upright new growth I’m more likely to think blossom blast. Also, blossom blast doesn’t spread very far or very fast down a branch.
Do you see any crooks? ooze?
I did have a hard freeze during bloom, only 5-10 pears on the entire tree. No crooks or ooze. It has only started showing up recently.
The tree is probably a Keiffer or Bartlett, 30 years ago those would have been the only varieties familiar to me. here is another pic
I’ve been seeing localized fireblight in the landscapes in central Ohio. Pretty heavy when it’s showing.
At a Tim Hortons they had Pyrus cal. Aristocrat and an unknown crabapple that had a lot of strikes. I’ve seen numerous area where crabs have had a lot of strikes.
Hope it stays there.
My orchard has been mostly clean, but I sprayed for it.
Well that was quick lol. This crab seems to catch everything, you can see these brown shoots scattered through the canopy. Much less of this on my neighbor’s regular apple, and nothing yet on my new trees, we will have to see.
The callery pears a couple streets over don’t have fireblight either.
Edit: I’m not 100% sure this is FB but not really sure what it would be if not that.
Here is some fireblight on Asian pear.
Here is some fireblight on Asian pear. It rained about an hour ago, so no ooze visible.
I have a LOT of blossom blast this year. We had three frost/freeze nights right as all my fruit trees were blooming. ZERO fruit this year on all 40 of my fruit trees. However, a lot of the trees have the blossom blast somewhere on the trees. Some a little, some a lot.I have been cutting the branches or parts of the branches affected by this. They look horrible like that.
Thanks for confirming what I thought- it was blossom blast and not fire blight.
Wondering about something @SpringForthFarmNC asked about. They were concerned about notching and grafting during spring because of fireblight.
I get tons of strikes on young new growth on leaves. I get some after bloom.
I can’t remember getting fireblight on a branch from a cut I made pruning or grafting.
I got fireblight on a couple of grafted shoots this year, but it was after they were growing vigorously- not at the location of the graft.
What are other people’s experiences??
I have a rule to not cut malus when it’s wet and going to be above 65. Ive never experienced fire blight from pruning cuts.
My understanding is that FB bacteria is always around to some extent. It needs a location to propagate that is wet and warm and an entry point to the plant for about 6 hours of moisture. If I recall you don’t get a blossom infection until the bacteria count goes above 10,000 on the pistol of the flower. Hard to believe there are that many, but they say a drop of ooze has over a million.
There was a case up in Canada that they say was propagated by wind blown sand t hat would create wounds on the branches and the bacteria came in with the rain and wind.
We had a major problem with it in container apples and pears. They were on spray stakes and might catch some mist and humidity after irrigation. So it may not have dried out as quickly as it normally would plus a lot of overhead irrigation close by. It was very hard to control …in fact it wasn’t. I think they may have it under control but had to make some drastic changes in production.
I had some out breaks in my orchard but since I started 2 sprays of Harbour streptomycin and using Actigard with my sprays, I’ve had very little FB. Also dormant copper spray.
TheActigard helps the plant protect itself from infection. I think it works well.
