Scott, I was noticing the same thing yesterday. I've done a comparable spray schedule as yours, and I would mention two sprays of Ferbam as well. We've had similar weather patterns as you, so this hit home with me. I only have a few odd Spitz blossoms left, and my Grimes Golden is in full bloom so I'll be watching it. I sprayed for pear blister mites this year (finally!) and although I see some damage, it's much less than previous years.

Herbert

Scott
I have been spraying with Firewall (17% strep.) at silvertip, again at buds showing white and at full bloom and have noticed no FB. I will spray one more time as soon as this rainy weather system moves out which should be Saturday and I should be in the clear. I used this schedule last yr. and was pretty well FB free. I have a grafting question. Can you graft European pears to Asian pear stock successfully?
RED

Red, that graft works but it is supposed to be short-lived. I had a few of them which I removed last winter so I would not be disappointed down the road.

Re: FB, I need to decide if I am going to do another spray this year given the huge assist by the weather.

Scott

Scott
That tree might be a good place to practice chip grafting. I'll use buds off existing pears so I won't be upset if they don't take or just last a few yrs. Its either that or chop it down.
I have read that you are supposed to spray until the fruit forms. That is what I did last yr. and it worked great. Its just one more spray after the petals fall.
RED

Scott: I haven't seen any but then we haven't had any rain to speak of during the bloom, or before for that matter, to spread it around. My pears are leafing out and won't miss getting nailed by FB a bit.

Michael

I had a lot and I do mean a lot of fire blight last year. I first started noticing it in the pear trees around the first of May. By the 9th of May, it was in all the pear trees, Asian as well as European. I was cutting out hugh garbage bag fulls. By the 21st of May, I had done three major cuttings.

It was not until May 27th that I cut fire bight out of the apple trees. A lot of the apple trees had been very aggressively pruned the previous winter and numerus water sprouts were present. This is where a lot of the shepard's crooks were found. This is the first year that I readily saw the golden droplets of the fire blight dripping on other parts of the fruit trees. I lost three trees from fire blight and have about three that may not survive this year.

It was not until September 3rd. that I finished cutting out fire blight! The last trees that I cut fire blight out of were Cox Orange Pippin, Lodi and Hewes Crabapple.

Well, it must have headed west for vacation, because I just had to cut out 1/3 of my Queen Cox, and maybe more to come. Waaah! And Sunday I informed the manager at a local Home Depot that I noticed all their flowering pears were covered with fireblight.

Carla in Sac

I've noticed the opposite. We are having worse FB this spring than we usually do. Even some of the Oregon Spur apple trees got blight, and that rarely ever happens. The Oregon Spur that didn't are all on M4 rootstock, in case that is significant. I always liked M4 for spur type apples; don't have any idea why nurseries don't much use it anymore.

On a good note, last year we put in our apple orchard, a row each of Golden Sentinel, Early Geneva, and Parkland, and none of those trees are infected yet. (Keeping fingers crossed.)

I didn't realize fireblight shows up around bloom time--thought they got infected then, but it didn't take off until later.

My old Yellow Transparent maintains a nasty infection, but the symptoms don't show up until some time in June, several weeks after the bloom finishes. Similar in other trees in the area.

Last year I already had lots of fireblight at this time of year, many blossoms would just shrivel up and blacken. I haven't seen a single such blossom this year. The shoot strikes hit their peak in mid-May last year so its early for that but I even had some shoot infections last year about this time.

Scott