North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["rmelrose@danvilleVT.net" <rmelrose@danvilleVT.net>]

Karen, The some do some don't is for sure! As to brown rot, up in 
Vermont the older nursery folk used to say that sour cherries did 
not survive long. Originally I assumed they were talking about 
hardiness, but I am now more convinced that disease is the issue, 
particularly brown rot but also black knot (and maybe another 
bacterial canker). I am not really one to give much advice, since I 
am just going down the spraying path myself, but it does look as 
though with care one spray might do the trick. Of course one has to 
watch for resistance, so should not use the same fungicide too often 
without a break, and garden clean up is clearly important. Mulching 
seems to help -- probably because one can see the old fruit drops -- 
and some cherries and plums seem to be at least partly resistant. 
European plums for instance have not suffered so far here. But I am 
reluctant to jump to rash conclusions without more study (see the 
Climate Change debate on this mail listing for the opposite method!)


Richard,
Thanks!
Brown rot may be one of my problems--seems it would take three timed  
sprays of fungicide at blossoming to control this --I will look into  
it. Reading about this online makes me think it is  a plum problem  
for me, not sure about the apricots. I am trying to grow my fruit  
trees as part of an edible landscape and naively assume they will  
just go happily along on their own... some do, some don't.

Karen