2003-05-05 - 7:33 p.m.
Been fighting Fireblight on the apple trees for the last week or so. It has been pretty severe this year. Fireblight is a wicked disease. It dosen't show up slowly it just jumps on you. Other diseases have early warning symptoms you can watch for and try to head off the problem. Your first sign of fireblight is a dead shoot. The trees are actually infected by bees as they visit the blooms. They carry the bacteria to the blooms and it starts to show up a couple of weeks after bloom. After you see it the only control is to try to cut out the infected shoot or limb at least a foot below the infection. I've been cutting out bagfulls of limbs. On really susceptible varieties it can kill the tree in a bad year. I've gotten rid of most of the really bad varieties. It's just not worth fighting it on a real susceptible tree.
I also sent some photos of a strange condition on the blackberries to a small fruit specialist I know. In 15 years of growing blackberries I've never seen anything like it. It has ruined about 50% of the blooms on some of the plants. I don't know if it is a disease or something else. I guess there's never a dull moment in farming.
