2003-10-28 - 6:57 p.m.
Today I spent the afternoon cutting down and toting off about 40 apple trees. I had great hopes for these trees. Most of them were a variety called "Gold Rush". They were one of the best tasting apples I ever put in my mouth. I first planted a Gold Rush tree about 10 years ago. When they started to bear I was amazed at the rich tart complex flavor they had. The variety was developed by Purdue University in a program to develop disease resistant varieties. I thought I had found the perfect variety. Gold Rush had everything I was looking for: great taste, good size and color, crunchy flesh, a semi-dwarf and spreading growth habit and it had all that and good disease resistance too. Over the last 5 or so years I have planted more Gold Rush apples and everthing was going well. Well, until Glomerella that is.
About 3 years ago I noticed something happening to my Gold Rush trees. About Mid-July a strange leaf disease started causing blotches on the leaves and the tree would start to defoliate. About half the leaves would fall and the ones that remained would look awful. Then the fruit rot phase of the disease would set in and I would loose close to 75% of the fruit. I had never seen anything like it and for a couple of years I blamed it on the drought and the stress it caused the trees. When it struck again this year after record rainfall I sent off some samples to an Extension specialist by way of Cherokee County Extension Agent Todd Hurt who was a great help. The news that came back was not good. It seems the disease Glomerella has been around for quite a while but a new more virulent strain showed up in a Tennessee orchard in 1997 causing almost total defoliation on susceptible varieties. Since then it has showed up in several states including, you guessed it, Georgia.
The specialist sent some recomendations that all required more spaying than I like and even with all the spraying he said it might not control it. The reason I chose Gold Rush was to cut way back on spraying so I chose an alternative control measure, a chainsaw. This seems to be happening with more and more frequency lately. Mummy berry on blueberrys, tomato spotted wilt virus on tomatoes and peppers, and now Glomerella. The list just keeps growing. Well Paul said that as the time approaches for Christ to return that Evil men will go from bad to worse and I guess the same holds true for diseases. I just hope Jesus comes back before there's nothing left I can grow.
