What is this on my apple tree?

hey folks. i have this bark issue that showed up on my fuji apple. same thing that killed my lodi last year. any way i can save the tree? its going downhill pretty fast.

Here’s a close up

Looks like fire blight to me. I had the same looking trunk on my one apple tree. I just took the whole thing out on Thursday. It was the straightest tree trunk I had in my orchard. I hated to lose it.

I have a couple fireblight cankers that looks like that. I am letting it go until winter pruning but there won’t be much left of those trees once it cut the off below the canker.

funny thing is I’ve never seen the tell tale burnt branches on either of these trees. how is the blight entering the trees? any way to prevent it in the future? i just put in a garfieild king y. transparent this spring. i need to protect it. I’ve had bad luck with apples on my property. could i cut below the infection to save the tree? surrounded with large mtn. ashes which i think is where the f. blight is comming from.

I had the same issue with mine. No burnt branches, etc. I have never had FB before in my orchards. I agree with you. Probably the Mountain Ashes was the cause. I had not know other trees besides cedars could cause this until I started reading about FB. I was going to try just cutting the infected part out as well but there was only going to be about a foot left above the graft. I was tempted to just do that as you mentioned. However, I was afraid if it was still infected it may spread to my other apple trees. I was willing to take out that one tree in order to possible save the rest of them. We will see if the others get it later on this year or next year. It is a horrible thing to see in an orchard. Even the ones that are supposed to be FB resistant seem to get it anyway.

Maybe it’s “comfreyitis” …… averse to being planted beside comfrey.
:slight_smile:

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well i cut it about 6in below the infection and sterilized the wound. it has good roots so it may recover. if it doesn’t , a williams pride is going there. tired of losing trees to this. luckily there are alot of wild apples on old farmland around here to keep me in applesauce every year. i paid $12 on clearance for that fuji at TSC so not a big loss. just lost time growing it.

I agree. Not a lot of $$ just the loss of time to get it to grow and be big enough to give you some fruit. The one tree I took out was on its second greening. So now that puts me at least 5 years behind to get fruit from that spot. Get a tree next year, and add 3 more years minimum. Plus the two years without fruit I just lost.

these last 2 were 2nd and 3rd leaf when i had to chop them! maddening!

thats my fertilizer , so its possible. :wink:

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