Yikes! I had almost nothing here, only four apple blossom clusters gone bad which I pulled off by hand.

Scott

Veggie King I spoke to soon, its going crazy here today. I had about a hundred strikes I just pruned out. The damage was mostly in blossoms and so it was not a disaster (so far). The very late-blooming apples got hit the worst. I hope it doesn't get much worse - it doesn't feel like its over by any means since I found damage in all stages. this is the worst my apples have ever been hit, although I have had more significant damage to individual trees before. The pears are untouched at this point.

Scott

My trees are about to die because of this. What do I do?
Should I only prune or is there something I can spray on them. Pear and Apples are hit hard. Starting to transmit between trees. HELP!!!!

Fire blight has gone mad in my area also. I believe this is due to the high number of Bradford pear plantings. I have noticed many of the flowering Bradford pears have been affected by fire blight now are reservoirs for this bacteria.

OKratpack, prune out all the bad wood cutting well below the injury. You can spray an anti-bacterial spray but I don't know how much good those do, I just prune prune prune. I am still pruning out damage but it is relatively minor at this point.

Scott

Hey, VeggieKing - long time no see!
Severe freeze damage on most of the pears here - which had all finished blooming, and most had small pears forming. But no more. Many had a significant portion of their leaves - particlularly on the W/NW side - frozen off. Early on, I pruned out a lot of black, frozen wood - couldn't(or didn't) get it all, 'cause lots of fruiting spurs were frozen back.
Most of the pears - Asian & European alike, have regrown, but I did notice a major FB hit on the Galloway(a European) pear over the weekend that necessitated pruning out 3 ft of its central leader.
Apples? I dunno, I've not even really looked at them - I'm to the point that, other than my crabs, I don't care much what happens to any of the apples - they're mostly a waste of space in my orchard.

Just a bit here on Pears. Caught it at the 1/4" black tip stage. Sprayed fish antibiotics and its history. IME, spraying is much better than pruning. I never (albeit only 5-6 years spraying) have had a recurrence on the same graft/tree as the ones that have been sprayed.

Update :
Well of my 3 Asian pear trees at least 1 of them appears to be on the mend. The other two still need some occasional pruning here and there as FB still erupts randomly. I got a feeling that by the end of the season I'll have one half decent Asian pear and 2 stubs left. Thanks for you all's feedback on this problem. Lesson learned - next time a freeze zaps the blooms to remove them ASAP before bacteria takes hold and works it way down the twigs, otherwise it's then limbs - branches - trunk...

Vgkg:

I don't mean to add to the confusion, but have seen no fireblight at all on my 3 Asian pears and 3 Europeans, in spite of having experienced the same prolonged freezing weather you did. The Asians all overset fruit normally, but the Flemish Beauty, a large tree, has only 3 pears I can find in spite of a normal bloom. So it must have been timing of the freeze. If the Flemish Beaty blooms did freeze, it was not followed by any fireblight at all. The little Magness, 8 years old, has 8 pears after thinning for the very first time, and also no fireblight.

I do see some touches of fireblight on some apple varieties, and simply clip the dead parts off as I thin and work around the trees. But these minor signs seem to have completely arrested themselves. I don't use the bleach dip method either, since I don't want to dip my favorite Felco in a highly corrosive solution, and can't carry a flagon of bleach with me anyway as I move around the trees with my orchard ladder. I don't mean to minimize the accepted bleach dipping wisdom, but I have not found it neccessary.

I dormant sprayed the trees twice with a strong solution of Kocide (copper), and applied agricultural streptomycin at full bloom and again at petal fall, as part of a cover spray that also included Imidan and Ferbam, a fungicide to combat cedar apple rust. CAR has been a bigger problem than fireblight for me in the past, often ruining up to 70% of the apples before I found this Ferbam stuff. Now I have no CAR at all.

Pears and apples suffer from different strains of fireblight, but I think the best recipe for both is prevention, not cure. The one fudge factor is the fact that my streptomycin is now 2 years old, and I don't know what the shelf life on this stuff is. I keep it in the refrigerator, but I know it won't be effective forever. In fact, I don't know for sure that it is effective now, but the fact that my fireblight problems are so minor make me think it was for this year at least.

I have been beavering away bagging apples and stone fruits, and foresee a record apple harvest here at Jellyman farms. I have bagged over 300 apples on the Stayman Winesap tree alone, which I figure ought to be over 4 bushels. This tree has never before produced even a half-bushel. Have yet to bag the large Empire tree, which looks like 3-4 bushels as well. This fruit bagging is real work, but good stretching exercise for the senior generation of which I am part.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Wow that's a lot of fruit bagging Don! I think you nipped your potential FB problems in the bud with those applications, never have tried any of those products you listed but the Ferbam for CAR sounds like another remedy I need as CAR is on all of my young apples (only 6 apples on the one Liberty tree). My neighborhood is saturated with cidar trees so there's no escape. As for this year my main concern (other than saving the Asian trees, and 1 Red Barlett that's taking a FB hit) is to get my precious peaches to ripeness so I'm dusting them regularly for pests after it rains. Got one yellow peach and one white peach, both look very good so far.

Don, I'm glad to hear I am not the only one not sterilizing my pruners after every cut. If it looks like there is some brown wood at the cut point I may clean off the pruners, but otherwise not. Life is too short for me to be sterilizing my pruners every time. For the bad blossoms I just pull them off by hand.

Scott

I can see the hassle of bleaching the pruners between snips but for me it boils down to just 6-7 trees (for FB) so not too bad a chore. Easier of course for hand pruners but the pole pruner is another story. Sterilizing is a must at the very least between different trees for me. Afterwards a paper towel drying and a little shot of WD-40 on the pruner keeps it from rusting out during storage.

Just thought I'd bump this one up for an update on last Spring's Fireblight. Each of my pear trees got hit to some degree but the 3 Asian and the Clapp's Favorite were hit the worse. I think I saved them but really won't know for sure until this spring. The bark on certain trunks don't look too good so I have my doubts. If these trees can build up a resisitence after the first attack then there may be hope for them yet. Several have been nibbled back by 3/4 of their original size.

Bumping this up again to update that several of my pear trees are starting to bloom again despite the drastic pruning last year. There are a few branches on a couple trees that got scared or mutated pretty badly so I'm hoping they'll survive ok and won't be a FB source this time around. Will keep track of the blooms for fruit formation in the coming weeks because the problem started spreading from dead frozen blooms last year. No freeze in sight...so far.

Hi VeggieKing.

Thanks for bumping this up. I will be watching this post since I am inexperienced in detecting FB. I have a couple trees with damaged bark (sun scald?) that I will be watching closely when the temps warm. I sprayed Bordeaux this week, hoping it may help some.

Wishing you an uneventful spring!

Regards,
PoseyPlanter

For my part I am going to spray copper at silver tip and then am going to use streptomycin at bloom this year. Last year I didn't do a copper dormant spray (the first time I used L/S instead of copper) and I think that was a major contributor to my bad outbreak last summer.

Scott

I haven't sprayed until it hit and then I use fish antibiotics from the pet store (I only have ~15 trees). With antibiotics, FB is very low on my list of concerns.

For some reason all my new pear trees get it the first year. I attribute it to contaminated pruning wounds. Grafts have been OK.

I run a Mayhaw orchard and combat FB with alternate applications of Aliette and Agrimycin along with Nova for rust. The fish drugs sound interesting. Any idea how many oz/100gal and is it residual?
Thanks,
Mac
M&M Farms

UPdate :
My 3 Asian pears have bloomed and set fruit, so far so good on those even though I pruned out about 50% of those FBed trees last year. But I lost entirely my Moon Glow pear as the FB infected the main trunk last season and evidently killed the tree. I'm certain that the trunk was infected by one lonely bud spur on the lower trunk portion last season and the frost-killed blossoms allowed the FB to infect from that point directly into the trunk. Also, my Claps Favorite was 70 decimated by FB last year and it may die yet as it is struggling now. The only pear tree that was not affected by FB last spring was the Anjour' (sp?) variety and I now believe that this was becuase it did not bloom last year. It bloomed really good this year and looks to set fruit soon. Dead or frozen blossoms appear to be the point source for FB and then it spreads thru the bud spur, down the stem, down the branch, and finally into the trunk.
Note to self - remove all future bud spurs from main trunk if they fail to set fruit, and remove all frost killed blossoms ASAP.

You're scaring me. I will be on the lookout for FB from here on!

I'm so sorry for your loss. Nature is not very kind sometimes.

I already saw some this spring - little bits of tan on the tips of the new leaves and buds. I hit it with streptomycin with a vengeance. If you do start getting it pay close attention to what it looks like and you will learn to detect the very early symptoms to get it outta there. I lost two trees last year because I wasn't noticing strikes on them. One was a rootstock sprout I did not notice which proceeded to infect the main trunk. The other was a medlar which I was not looking closely enough at since I did not know they were highly suceptible. All the other strikes caused minor damage, because I pulled off the damage quickly.

Scott

Well my FB didn't take too long to show up. I already removed about 20 FBed dying bud spurs from 1 Asian pear tree, others appear ok for now. Some of these spurs did set fruit but most did not. Will check all pear trees daily now.

Ugh, my Anjou Pear which did bloom this year got the FB this year too. 100% of the blossoms did not set fruit and each of these bud spurs had the FB. I removed all of them within a day or two of infection so hopefully I put a stop to it's spread. So far the other trees that survived last years onslaught are ok but the Moonglow is dead as a door nail and Clapps Favorite has only one live branch left. The Red Bartless and 3 Asians are doing ok now that I trimmed off a few FBed buds. Only the Asian pears will produce this year, assuming they hold on.

update :
Well I said goodbye to the Clapps Favorite over the weekend as the last remaining branch fell victim to fire blight. I'm also still snipping away infected spurs and branches from the 3 asian pears. Looks like I'll get a tried and true Keiffer pear to replace either the Moonglow or Clapps Fav. Was looking forward to tasting a CF but alas not now.