North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John Barbowski <jbarbowski@gmail.com>]

Alan Haigh wrote:

 

In my business, where I grow, install and manage bearing age fruit trees, my customers enjoy the reliability of Liberty's crops and how the fruit can sometimes be cosmetically perfect without a single fungicide spray.  Its scab and car resistance are well known but I have also found it to be relatively resistant to fly speck and sooty blotch on some sites.   However, only a few of my customers consider Liberty one of their favorite apples.

I bag my apples with zip locks plastic bags. The corners are cut to promote drainage. Many bags do not drain well and one can often see moisture drops and retained water inside. According to a Cornell article,  fly speck and sooty blotch do well in high humidity environments. ( http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/treefruit/diseases/sbfs/sbfs.asp ). My golden delicious seems to be quite vulnerable to these fungi. Liberty was quite resistant (fyi - I like Liberty; Liberty is readily available in most of our supermarkets).

I have always wondered about the micro-climate inside the plastic bags and what maladies are being promoted. I intend to make my drainage holes larger.

I have also found that with some bags that have degenerated by developing large tears over the summer (this was my 3rd year using some of them), there weren't any appreciable signs of extra deformities on the apple. It appears that as long as there is reasonable cloaking of the apple, pest control is good.


jmb

Canadian Zone 6B
just north of Toronto