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  • From: Stefan Brandle <sbrandle@css.tayloru.edu>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] How to deal with severe fire blight
  • Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 08:27:14 -0500

After the infamous late freeze last spring (2002), I got hit pretty badly by fire blight in my apple and pear trees. It seems like every other pear tree branch was infected, and one of the apple trees (Jonathan, I believe) was almost as badly hit. I whacked away large amounts of the pear trees, but gave up on the Jonathan--too much to go around trying to snip out little bits of branches here and there.

The question is: what do I do now.
* Do I chop them back to a 4-foot post and let the trees regrow? (I saw something like that in Pomona recently.)
* A variation on this is: do I chop the tree back and then graft fire blight resistant scions (cleft grafting at this time of year?)
* Do I just let the trees try to recover? (I think that I've run across references to that too.)
* Other suggestions?

In zone 5b and saying really nasty things about unfairly late frosts.

-- sb
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Stefan Brandle, Ph.D., Taylor University CSS Department
sbrandle@css.tayloru.edu, Telephone: 765-998-4685 FAX: 765-998-4940
http://www.css.tayloru.edu/~sbrandle
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  • [NAFEX] How to deal with severe fire blight, Stefan Brandle, 03/05/2003

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