Trouble brewing in the orchard

[Smiles Jr.]

We purchased our mini-farm in late November of 2009. Just in time to put the orchard and gardens to sleep for the winter. The farm had been owned by a widow who was in her 81st year when she passed in April 2009. We bought the place at auction and we do not know much about the history of the place or the care that the farm has received.

I have 13 apple trees in the tiny orchard and the trees seem to be in fair condition. I did not apply dormant oil last fall due to all the other things we had ongoing. 10 of the trees are heavily loaded with fruit and 3 seem to be in trouble.

Pic #1
Dead branch

Pic #2
Location of suspected trouble. The dark area on the branch seems to be the dividing line between healthy looking tree and the dying end.

Pic #3
Orange and yellow spots on leaves.

Pic#4
Another leaf.

Pic #5
Disfigured fruit.

Pic #6
My little buddies are worried too

I plan to go to the extension service in Osgood, IN this coming week to see if they can help. In the meantime I would appreciate help from friends here at TheEasyGarden. Can you guys offer any ideas on what the problems could be? can you offer solutions?

Thanks, Smiles

 

[Hooligan]

Sorry, I'm not much in the way of help here but some of the apples on our 5 apple trees look similar to yours in the "disfigured fruit" pic and I'm curious to know more too...thanks for posting this! I'm in IN too...but I'm in NW Indiana.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Hi Hooligan. I have taken some samples of leaves, fruit, and bark (along with photos) to our county ag extension office in Osgood, IN and they gave me some handout sheets with information about fruit tree problems. But these sheets are kind of generic and do not focus on apples.

Since I posted the pics here I have cut the dead or dying branch off and I have also done a little more pruning. I sprayed my orchard with Ortho "Seven" to try to control any insect invasion. I really did not want to use chemicals but other apple growers in our area have advised me that "going organic" can lead to a dead orchard in no time at all.

I'm very disappointed with the response here on Easy Garden and several other back yard type on-line forums - but when I go to the "professional" fruit growers they get very technical and I get lost quickly. The pros also spend tons of money (which I do not have) on their problems.

I'm keeping a close eye on my orchard and it seems to be doing OK but not great.

Good luck with yours and keep us up to date on your efforts.

Larry

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi Hooligan. I have taken some samples of leaves, fruit, and bark (along with photos) to our county ag extension office in Osgood, IN and they gave me some handout sheets with information about fruit tree problems. But these sheets are kind of generic and do not focus on apples.

Since I posted the pics here I have cut the dead or dying branch off and I have also done a little more pruning. I sprayed my orchard with Ortho "Seven" to try to control any insect invasion. I really did not want to use chemicals but other apple growers in our area have advised me that "going organic" can lead to a dead orchard in no time at all.

I'm very disappointed with the response here on Easy Garden and several other back yard type on-line forums - but when I go to the "professional" fruit growers they get very technical and I get lost quickly. The pros also spend tons of money (which I do not have) on their problems.

I'm keeping a close eye on my orchard and it seems to be doing OK but not great.

Good morning Smiles.......!

I am very sorry that you are unhappy about the lack of response you have received here on TEG........ .......so let's see what I can do to put this right by putting you in touch with one of my UK sites that I use.
I have to say that you photos are difficult to read as they are rather out of focus or blurry. But have a look through all these different diseases etc & see if you can match them up with yours. Look under TREE FRUIT.

http://www.gardenaction.co.uk/techniques/pests/plant_pest_disease_centre.htm

Good Luck!


Hattie

Good luck with yours and keep us up to date on your efforts.

Larry

 

[vfem]

Hooligan and Smiles

Sorry that we have not responded in a timely manner, but we are a smaller community, and during the busy growing season less of us are on here for lesser amounts of time while we enjoy the outside world. In fact, 90% of weekends I don't even turn on the computer. So I miss new posts that get lost for those 2 days every week it seems. Today appears to be a chance of rain so I got a few things done early, and now I'm just wasting an hour until I have a phone meeting with a couple wanting to learn to garden organic.

As for the orchard, I'm thinking 2 things could be going on... apple scab, which I've only seen in orchards as a child in Ct. Those the fruit looked ugly and twisted, the orchard we went to grew exclusively for cider. They said it gave the apples a deeper flavor for juicing. So if you are thinking 'cider mill' you may not want to look a gift horse in the mouth!

Of course if they are eating apples that may not be what you want to deal with. The reality is, organic apples will always have bites taken out of them, or funky colors here or there... they are NOT pretty and they are not shiny and waxy and perfect. If you want what you see in the store you are going to have to spray spray spray... then coat them all in wax!

I have 9 trees (apple/pear/peach) and I spray with Neem oil when they are dormant, and then not again until after the fruit develops. Then I spray occasionally, usually after a rain. Always in the evening, and on non-windy days. Neem oil is pure, and taken from the oil of a tree in South Africa. Its got a stinky citrus scent to it, so it wards off a lot of bugs but it also helps control most fungi problems. I do believe it controls apple rust as well....

Apple rust seems to have found you as problem #2:

http://www.caf.wvu.edu/Kearneysville/disease_descriptions/omcar.html

My suggest is to get through this season as best you can. Those apples look fine for freezing, pie fillings, jams, jellies, tarts.... and JUICE! Just start treating in the manner you would like starting next Feb. An orchard is a lot of care, and though I'm new at it, and this is my first year with fruit... you only learn from hands on experience. I wouldn't expect to get your trees in full swing (organic or not) when you are new to it, for a few more seasons!

Good luck! :watering

 

[4grandbabies]

Smiles, go online to Gardens alive . I buy quite a bit of items for the garden from them. They have a whole section on insects and diseases in one of their catalogs..along with the proper product. It sounds like Plum Curculio infestation. Clean up damaged fruit to prevent the larve from getting in the soil. My daughter sprayed our trees with neem...for this season..but we will probably buy Surround at Home Crop Protection this fall and grub away for neotodes on the ground for any larve that got in the ground before we discovered. Neem was our idea because that is what we had on hand at the time. We are waiting to see if that helps

 

[patandchickens]

Sorry not to have responded earlier but, me, I'm on dialup and honestly if a post contains a large number of slow-loading pics I just give up and move on.

The dead branch could be anything. I would not personally worry about it, just cut it off.

The spots on the leaves are classic cedar-apple rust. Google for more info.

The pic of the fruit is too small for me to really see what's going on... are there MARKS on the fruit, or is it just that some are lopsided and lumpy? (If the latter, they may just not have been well-pollinated, e.g. their pollinator was blooming poorly this year or there were few bees out during pollination time). Again I do not think it's a big deal and unless there are obvious *marks* you will probably not be able to ID the problem for sure, and in any case it is too late to do anything about. Funny-shaped apples still make perfectly fine applesauce

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Hey everyone - I guess I sounded kind of heavy handed when I said that I'm disappointed with The Easy Garden. Sorry. Maybe I had visions of sugar-plums dancing in my head when I thought there would be many replies magically appear with the exact answers I was looking for. Silly me. I realize that there are not always solutions coming out of the woodwork.

I thoroughly enjoy The Easy Garden and come here often to browse the topics.

My trees are doing fine but I still have lots of questions about fruit trees in general.

Thanks guys.