North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[tanis grif <tanisgrif@yahoo.com>]

2 questions:  

Listers, I have young apple & pear trees out of the ground.  Some potted, some
bare-root in bags.  I could use ideas on whether I should plant them into the 
ground
ASAP, or keep them stashed in an unheated shed until this cold snap is past.  
Apples
look full dormant yet (but I bet they are awake); pear buds are swollen.

SB, are you sure the infection after the freeze was fireblight?  One spring 
after a
frosty cold wet bloom season, my trees ended up w/ something like FB but I 
did some
research and decided it was Pseudomonas blossom-blast.  I never took a sample 
to a
plant pathology lab (it was alarming only on one old pear tree), but I will 
probably
have more chances in the future.  


--- Stefan Brandle <> wrote:

> 21 F two nights in a row. Oh, dear. This is getting worse. Woe is me. Or 
> to be more precise, woe is those of my plants that have fallen for the 
> fickle promises of temporarily warm weather. I can spray, cover, etc. a 
> plant or two, but I guess this is where I have to wish the majority of 
> the early-blooming plants good luck. Leaves come back fairly easily, but 
> blooms don't. Fortunately, only a few have actual flowers open, but 
> we'll have to see how it goes.
> 
> Four or five years ago we had a very late (May 19, 20, 21, or so) set of 
> hard freezes. Right after that, I got my first fireblight outbreak. All 
> three older apple trees and the two bartlett pears got nailed. I kept 
> cutting chunks out of the pear trees and beat fireblight on one, but 
> lost the other completely. The 15-20 foot apple trees were so badly 
> covered that I didn't even try dealing with the problem. They all shook 
> it off, leaving a number of dead twigs, including the 
> fireblight-susceptible jonathan. I guess that it's better to get the 
> freezes now than a month and a half from now.
> 
> -- sb
> 
> 



 
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