Scott,

I'm getting a fair amount of rot on bird pecked apples. I haven't noticed any shoot blight though. We've had pretty dry (non-hurricane) weather here, so that may be the difference.

Apples don't get brown rot.

As was suggested, perhaps it's rotting of previously damaged fruits.

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Jean, apple brown rot is a well-known disease. Below is a website from WSU with a description of apple brown rot as well as a picture.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: http://postharvest.tfrec.wsu.edu/marketdiseases/brownrot.html

Scott,

I have to agree with Jean. No where is brown rot described as a disease of apples or even mentioned in the Mid-Atlantic Orchard Monitoring Guide in the apple section. White rot, Brooks spot, bliter spot, Black pox, cedar-apple rust lesions, and of course the damage caused by scab which could look like brown rot on the fruit.

hoseman, how can you agree with Jean?- guess you posted without reading the article he linked. Scott is always very careful about his research and it would really surprise me if he suggested a disease that didn't exist in his diagnosis. I have much more experience than him but feel he's at least as good at diagnostics as I am. Glad I'm not competing with him for business in my area.

Whenever he says anything that seems to contradict my preconceived take I try to double check my facts- chances are I'm wrong.

Scot, I'm seeing some minor shoot blight such as you're experiencing but nothing to cause concern. Must be all that crowding in your orchard (just joking). Now that you mention it, I think you're right about it being apple brown rot. I just expect such problems in conditions of excessive rain.

Brown rot is indeed a disease of apples. I've also seen it on pears.

It's not near as common on pome fruits as stone fruits. Generally it has to have an injury/entry point on pome fruits, whereas stone fruits it can attack uninjured fruit.

I suspect some home grown orchards get more brown rot on pome fruits because of the close proximity to stone fruits providing higher innoculum levels, which would also explain why brown rot on pomes is not mentioned as much in commercial literature.

All the other summer rots mentioned are fairly easy to distinguish from brown rot. Scott's link above shows some good examples of brown rot on apples.

All of this rot is in my backyard orchard, where most of my stone fruits are. Next year its MFF in the back, I'm finished my 100% organic experiment there. Harvestman, I do think my close planting hurt me there, but its the combination of trying to be organic and having 6 or less hours of sun on top of the close planting that did me in. I am hoping that with MFF and a touch more thinning I will be good in the back next year.

In terms of the diagnosis, it doesn't match any other disease and is producing the brown spores of brown rot, not the salmon-colored spores of bitter rot, the only other disease that looks similar.

Scott

Scott does the use of copper solutions fit into organic horticulture? When do you do your fall spraying, before or after leaf drop, before or after first hard frost?
Dan

Dan, copper is USDA organic, but its not allowed in some organic programs; it builds up in the soil over time so you need to be careful with how much you use. I spray copper at leaf drop which is around the first frost.

Copper is not very helpful against brown rot unfortunately. Sulphur and Serenade are the two best organic options. Note that I am not spraying those guys after early July, I would surely get better results if I kept spraying. I am pretty good about picking out rotten fruits and I have found that helps check the spread a lot, but I was away for two weeks this summer and it was a rainy period in which the rot got something horrible. Overall, I expect if I did every other week sulphur or Serenade along with rotted fruit removal I would do much better on brown rot. But, the problem is I am completely sick of spraying by July and am trying to find a way to avoid it. Actually, looking at my logs this year my last spray was June 30th. That is earlier than I usually stop, I was in a battle with the deer and squirrels at that point and was distracted.

Scott

Scott, this was not a good year at many sites for low spray- even with synthetics.

My peaches are so waterlogged that even when they get ripe on the tree without rot, they rot within a day of harvest without refrigeration and every wasp bite begins to rot around the edges in no time- next it spreads around the seed and the fruit becomes worthless.

I have all that I need but if I was growing commercially this would be a season to spray until harvest. Lots of wasted fruit but it's not high enough quality for me to be proud of anyway- mostly pretty watery and bland. Some of the trees are sitting in standing water and I've never seen things so saturated, even in spring.

Thanks Scott, I'll keep the sprayer on standby. Bambi stopped by with two fawns last night. Stood about 30 feet from the drive and watched us leave. How did you discourage them?
Dan

Dan, I put up a fishline fence around my whole property. One line strung at 3' high worked for about a month, up until a few days ago; now they know where I ran it and are jumping over it. So, I am going to get some 8' poles soon, and run lines at 3', 5', and 8' or so. I am in a suburb and don't want to build a real fence around the whole yard but the fishline is not that noticeable and its also pretty easy to duck under so I can just keep it up all the time.

Scott