North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

No it's not pollution, I have the same problem way out in the country.  My old gooseberry leafs out every spring, makes a rather spare crop, loses leaves all summer, but looks a little better now.  My new gooseberries bought last fall, looked really good early on, lost nearly all their leaves in the heat of summer, and now have nice green new leaves on the tips of all the branches.  We have been in drought, then had 2 weeks in a row with a half inch each of those weeks, and I think that brought on the new leaves.  It's been too dry to water them much.  I've just tried to keep the peppers, winter squash and tomatoes going.  Usually I have some water to spare for my young fruit trees, not this year.  Seems to me that most of the leaves fell off in the hot dry time, not the wet.  Mind you, we had a wet few days here and there, enough to cause plenty of early blight on the tomatoes.  It would kill a bunch of tomato leaves and then it would be dry for weeks on end.  So I guess anthracnose could have struck and wiped out leaves quickly when I wasn't looking.  Does it act like that?   I'd see a few brown speckles, maybe the next week those leaves were already gone.  I never saw any leaves that looked really bad like they should be falling off. 

    The new black currants, Ben Lomand and Black Down looked good all summer.  Sure they had some brown spots on the leaves, but they kept nearly every leaf.  Ben Sarek defoliated maybe 6-8 weeks ago, with bright green buds for next year, and now has one new branch that is fully leafed.  My new Crandall defoliated early and has hardly had a leaf all through the hot weather, doesn't look any better now.  So much for disease resistance in native plants.  Not dead... but maybe I'd better move it to some better soil.  Same for the Ben Sarek.  The others are all on good garden soil.    Donna