Leaves on certain branches will turn yellow and dry up, along with the branch, which dries up and dies. Branch by branch, my beloved Goodland apple tree seems to be falling away. What is this and what, if anything, can be done?
I cut off some of the completely dried up branches (disinfected pruning shears before each cut). Was that good/right to do?
Maybe I should mention, we had a cold winter and some trees were quite late budding out.
Sorry for the poor picture quality, I only have a flip phone.
My best guess is winter injury. A few years ago we had a very cold winter in my area (southern WI) and every commercial orchard I know of had severe winter damage on some apple varieties. Especially Jonathan. The trees were full of dead or partly dead branches with some alive and ok. So much damage most just ripped out this variety and re-planted.
Second possibility is fireblight. I presume you found no fireblight cankers when you winter pruned?
Since you mention you had a very cold winter I will bet it is winter injury. Odd though as Goodland is supposed to be a very cold hardy Canadian variety. But all it takes is one weird winter. We have had crazy events in my area at times, like warm fall and then snow in late October-lots of plants showed damage the following spring. This past year my shrub roses stayed green until early November and did not shut down. Then cold and snow so they all had dried green leaves hanging on them. This Spring many in my area reported severe cane damage on many normally hardy shrub roses.
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I did not see fireblight cankers.
We had a winter low of -43F, which is the coldest day we’ve had since the tree has been planted. But we’ve gotten down into the -30F range several other winters, with no damage in those years that I could see.
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