North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com>]

Bill ,

Once fireblight is in the area, there's not much you can do for it except 
exactly what you have done.  Strep is sprayed at king bloom and is not 
recommended to be used after petal fall.  As you say, copper is used as your 
first defense dormant spray.  Just keep watching the new growth leaf tips 
and keep pinching them off as you see any sig of a brown tip forming.  One 
the terminal bud has set, you are out of the woods for the season.  Look for 
any dark cankers on the tree's 1 year old wood and remove them if possible. 
Then next season start with the dormant copper and use strep at king bloom.

We have a block of Gala/Jonafree/Empire that got major fireblight in 2007. 
We always spray copper at dormancy and strep at kinkg bloom.  It hit over 
1,000 trees and took us 3 days to cut out with 6 men.  In spring of 2008, we 
used our normal copper, then applied Step as well as Mychoshield 
(oxytetracycline) and Apogee (growth regulator) to control shoot growth. 
The same blocjk in 2008 had to have only about a dozen branches cut out.  We 
have used the same spray protocol this season and so far so good.  During 
this entire fight against blight, we still had a good harvest of apples with 
no damage to apples at all!  By the way, these trees are planted on 12' 
centers with the rows 14' apart!  Fireblight is not picky about where it 
decides to rear its ugly head.

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
Office (815) 648-4467
Mobile (815) 228-2174
Fax (609) 228-2174
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com
http://www.theorchardkeeper.blogspot.com
http://www.revivalhymn.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
To: "NAFEX List" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 8:45 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] Fireblight


> When thinning my apples a couple of days ago, I discovered a number of 
> dead spurs on my Suncrisp tree. It sure looks like the pictures I've seen 
> of fireblight. This is one of the four apple trees planted in the same 
> spot - and very close to my Asian pears - so I'm worried that the disease 
> will spread. So far, though, I haven't seen any sign of it on the other 
> three varieties - Honeycrisp, Goldrush, and Fulford Gala - planted there. 
> However, I did see one dead shoot on my Pink Lady apple on the other side 
> of yard.
>
> I pruned off the dead spurs - disinfecting the pruner after each cut with 
> Lysol spray disinfectant - but I couldn't cut below the dead area on most 
> of them without removing most of the main scaffolds of the tree. Well, I 
> suppose I'll end up doing that if it really IS fireblight and it continues 
> to spread. Any suggestions here? I've heard that you can use Streptomycin 
> spray, but I don't have a clue where to get something like that. I've also 
> heard that copper spray helps, but that's for dormant spraying only, 
> right? How fast does fireblight normally spread?
>
> Note that it's been very dry here this year. We've had only about 1/4 of 
> our usual precipitation YTD (which isn't a whole lot even in normal 
> years). I don't know if that makes fireblight more or less likely, or has 
> no effect. Just thought I'd mention it.
>
> And this is a case where crowding probably makes a bad situation worse, 
> huh?
>
> Bill
> Lincoln, NE (zone 5)
>
> --
> If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will 
> Rogers