North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>]

Ginda, I have quite a few CAR susceptible varieties.  I used to feel like I 
needed to control any and all spots, but now I only focus on how many fruits 
get damaged by CAR spots on the fruits themselves.  Since I am getting hardly 
any of those now, I am not worrying about CAR so much.  But if the fruits 
start to get spots I will have to take CAR more seriously.  I did have it 
very bad in one part of my orchard since I had a juniper right by a row of 
apples and I removed that juniper and fixed that problem.

So, while your tree sounds "susceptible" by the standard classification, in 
practice it sounds like you are OK unless it gets worse.  In my orchard it 
took about five years to build to the peak infection level.

Scott z6/7 MD


> I've been reading a lot of comments on which apples are susceptible/immune 
> to CAR, and I wonder how important that is?  I have a Jonathan tree in the 
> front yard that seems to get it.  I'd say that most leaves have one or two 
> small lesions (with a few leaves being clean, and a few having more 
> lesions.)  So, yes, it makes the leaves less attractive, but it only seems 
> to damage a small portion of the leaf surface.  My tree grows more than I 
> really want it to each year, and it sets more fruit than I'd like it to 
> keep.  (Of course, when all the apples disappear at ping-pong-ball size to 
> the squirrels. . . )
> 
> So, what's the issue with CAR?  Does that count as "susceptible"?  
> "resistant"?  (It's obviously not "immune".)
> 
> thanks,
> Ginda
> 
> eastern MA, zone 6
> near a cedar, I assume, although I have no idea where the cedars are 
> hanging out.
>