North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> > My concern was that if there is active fire blight in an orchard, the  wounds 
> > and physical disturbance of summer pruning could help spread fire blight.  My 
> >  concern about summer pruning may not be warranted as I’ve since found out 
> > that the  wounds created by breaking off water sprouts and by cuts made to 
> > thin out vegetative  growth to more branches will heal enough to resist 
> > infection in just a few hours.


Thanks, Richard. That's encouraging! That was exactly my concern, too, 
so I'm glad to hear this.

This year, I did pinch off the very end of some tall shoots on one of my 
Asian pears, since I figured that, if fireblight did infect it there, 
I'd have plenty of shoot to cut off before it got to anything I wanted 
to keep.

Unfortunately, pinching off the very tip didn't do much of anything to 
slow down its rate of growth. Heh, heh. The tree hardly seemed to notice 
it, in fact.

But maybe next year I'll be more aggressive. I was very worried to see 
fireblight for the first time this year, and it just kept returning over 
and over again on my Suncrisp apple. But (except for two spots early in 
the summer on my Pink Lady apple, which is on the other side of the 
yard), it never did spread to the other apples planted in the same 
location (only inches apart), nor to the Asian pears close by. So it 
looks like I might have panicked too quickly. :-)

I certainly won't get complacent, but that newsletter might get me to do 
some cautious summer pruning next year.

Thanks again,

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the marketplace of ideas - 
complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to 
misinterpretation and abuse. - George F. Kennen