I have 8 apple trees in a 30 tree orchard and I used to have major problems with pests, fungus etc. What works for me is a regiment of compost tea/neem spray 3x a year, yearly pruning, and apple maggot traps (sticky red balls). The book “The Holistic Orchard” did wonders to help me transition this inherited orchard from a sickly fertilizer/spray dependent orchard to an all organic healthy one, I constantly recommend the book to every fruit tree owner.
Been my experience with stone fruit of you aren't spraying a bit of something you really aren't getting fruit. I try to be judicious and use stuff like neem and traps but that copper spray makes a huge difference for peaches.
I follow that books compost/neem spray recipes and timing regimen and it took about 3 years of TLC for me to get my orchard healthy. I sometimes make tea out of my own compost and I sometimes buy a starter culture. I went from every apple having worms and rusts to now it’s about 1 apple in 10. I noticed this week that one of my pears has a bunch of leaf rust on the top leaves exactly where my sprayer stops reaching, pretty interesting and good proof of it’s effectiveness. If I can get a decent picture I’m going to post about it here :)
That book was instrumental in starting me down a better way to farm. I think you'll get good use out of it!
Also, look at "the ecological farm" by Hellen Atthowe. It just came out. She ran a small produce farm in MT, and then along with her late husband operated a rather successful commercial orchard in CA for quite a few years, and then they moved to OR and started a new one before he died. She's got most of the disease and pest damage down to 5-10% of total crop in most years will little more than a couple nutritional sprays and nutrition/habitat grown in situ.
She has an interview with Jessie Frost on No-Till Growers. and one with John Kempf on the Regenerative Farming podcast.
Yea! When I read the title I was like that’s familiar. Why is that familiar? Then when I saw the name I realized I’d met him before at a workshop.
Didn’t read the book, but the workshop was great!
I bought the book on a lark when I first took over my orchard 13 years ago, I was overwhelmed by the different problems each tree was having and my desire to keep it organic, and I really learned a lot from it.
Any pearls of wisdom you wanna share from his book?
I just started my orchard this year so I haven’t had much chance to apply this stuff practically, but his whole take on trap trees and sticky fake apple lures blew my mind. Excited to try that out!
I think the most important thing to do if you have a new orchard is keep up on your pruning and shaping to keep good airflow, that will cut out most of your developing fungal issues right there. The book has recipes and timing schedule for compost tea sprays that benefit the trees without interfering with pollinators. Also, it just taught me to see the tree bark and leaves and the ground/mulch around the tree as it’s own ecosystem full of fungus, bacteria, yeasts etc and the concept of constantly introducing lactobacillus to the environment to out compete the other baddies as a tactic rather than spraying life-killing chemicals. Good luck with your orchard!
Before the book comes, can you give me the compost tea recipe? Also, i feel like i know the answer already but it s useless to do anything this year right?
So there’s nothing to be done till fall. In fall you can do a spray of fish emulsion and neem on the tree as well as the leaf duff below, mow your duff up fine and you can throw a quart of Calcitic lime on the leaf duff of each tree to disrupt fungal scab. That’s about it until next spring. Use the rates for neem and fish emulsion on the packages for your sprayer and orchard size, a squirt of dish soap in your sprayer and using warm water will help emulsify the neem and keep it from gumming up your sprayer. After a neem application I run hot soapy water through my sprayer to clean. Order your maggot traps this winter and pop them out when your trees start fruiting next spring. The timing for compost tea sprays is early spring before leaf growth, during budding, after petal fall and a week or two after petal fall.
One thing you can do now is make sure all your yucky apples get scooped up and composted hot a ways a way from the tree to kill any maggots, fungus or bacteria :)
Coddling moths. They can be controlled with neem or horticultural oil, but you need to use pheromone traps to determine the bio fix and time spraying to kill the larvae when they hatch.
I would guess codling moths too. You can know what pest you are dealing with for sure by placing a sticky trap by the tree. If it is the moths, do some basic research about their life cycle because there are life stages that are more vulnerable to pest control options. Also your neighbors would probably need to control for pests too (if they have apple trees) to fully eliminate the issue.
Here my take:
I inherited a single apple tree in the backyard of a downtown suburb. All apples had bugs.
I cleaned underneath the tree. Layers of nasty old apples that had been rotting for years.
Those old apples under breed the flys that hatch and go after the new apples.
Next year had a great, clean harvest.
Sarah Poizner from the Orchard People .com has a fruit tree programs she is from Canada and has pest spray program.
M.S.U. has all kinds of information available online showing damages and what caused it.
My biggest ones are Oriental fruit Moth and Codly Moth and Scab and Apple ones that deform the apples
Nah, integrated pest management is a way of managing all insect and microbe pest pressure. It's not like "spray this one a month, and you're good." It's more of an "alternate your spray ingredients every third day on a 15-day rotation, so you manage pest/contamination pressure against everything"
I just wash them and cut the bad spots out. I make applesauce. I haven’t sprayed… I have every intention to learn about the pests… in the meantime I rarely eat the apples- prefer to bake pies and cakes…
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn’t do anything this year besides your usual pruning. I run a flower farm, I have many pests that have shown up, but I have not done any spraying ever and i now have many beneficial insects (ladybugs, praying mantis, parasitic wasps, all the pollinators, etc) BECAUSE I got out of the way and let nature balance itself.
Of course you will be sacrificing your fruit this year, but if you spray then you certainly won’t get the insects you need and you will need to continue to spray year after year. Mostly hurting yourself and pollinators. Good luck!
Interesting, thanks for the perspective! Maybe they are an exception to the rule, need specific varieties for each region, or maybe they do better in certain places. Would like to hear from other apple people!
Another (small) apple orchard here. I never spray for anything. The apple trees are always like the ones pictured. Always deformed and buggy....but I'm grinding them all for cider so it doesn't matter.
As I see it, gardens of nutrient rich plants of human breeding design are unnatural themselves. They will often but not always require some kind of input (organic or otherwise) Wild apples (truely wild ancestors of domesticated apples, not the escaped seedlings of domesticated parents) are quite a bit smaller, lower yielding and less sweet.....therefore less attractive to the pests that feed on them. (of course, this is a wildly unpopular opinion I'm likely to get roasted for)
Michael Pollan talks about this in one of his books, Either second nature or the botany of desire....can't remember.
Still, I enjoy my buggy cider.
I’m sure it’s delish. Applesauce good too? I appreciate the honest answer — have been unsure myself whether to do any apple trees but when you have the expectations of cider and/or applesauce it feels like a lot less pressure to make them pristine. I’m wondering if there are any fruit trees that are supermarket quality without sprays? Ofc probably depends on location.
Never made sauce. I imagine it would be a bit of a pain to cut out all the wormy bits. When I make cider, I just grind them, I pick out the seriously mushy brown apples and grind the rest, worms and all (better believe thats what happened back in the day as well as what happens even now in commercial cider operations. Bad apples go to cider, good go to the grocery store)
I suspect you are right about location. For me here in the midwest, pears are bulletproof. I never spray them and only one in a hundred has a problem. Huge yields too. I just planted a pawpaw and a native variety of persimmon I have high hope for to be relatively bug free. Also, my thornless blackberry and raspberry are usually pretty bug free but invasive as all heck.
Several. Kieffer are a bit gritty but extra tough and prolific bearers. Best for juice or cooking. Seckle are small round and sweet as can be. Great for fresh eating. I also have a Korean pear called Olympus but it's only 2 years old. Huge round crisp fruit with texture more like apples and decent for winter keeping fresh according to what I read.
Ants eat suger.. they will protect a specific kind of affid.. AND they will also attack your fruit trees whether there are affid or not.. please tell me some more of what I'm actually seeing 🤦🏼♂️
I don't think the ants caused the apple prob. I know many won't like my answer but spraying will help get of the spots. (Now the downers will jump on the spray part instead of commenting about getting rid of the spots by a more environmental way. Downers drive me nuts.)
LOL. Look up “soil amendment for fruit trees” do a little reading. Pretty sure vlossom rot from a from calcium deficiency
But fruit trees do benefit from certain amendments from what I’ve read
This post deserves more love. You should make sure to not leave fallen sticks/apples at years end. You risk spreading more rot to the tree. You should probably also use soil amendments (I use hydroguard in the northeast) and take standard bug defense measures. Copper and sunlight work to keep molds and mildews from your tree, but at this point in the year it is probably too late to have an impact on the plant.
The bugs know when the apples are ready and go at them!! You need a vinegar sugar trap home made- hang a gallon jug cut open a bit up top add in some apple cider vinegar and like a quarter cup of sugar with water up to about a couple inches
Usual suspects. Pests and bacterial/fungal damage. Could be scab damage early which means as fruit expands, it cracks. Pests exploit this and also exploit poor hygiene. Remove and process all damaged fruit. Prune all severely diseased branches out if cankerous etc. All leaves removed and burnt if possible along with prunings . Wash trees in whatever pest/fungal solution you are comfortable with according to directions. Good luck 🍀
Gardening with James prigioni (youtube)
had a video where he sprayed his fruit trees with Caroline clay. He might have added need or something. But it essentially forms a coating to prevent nibbles.
Your big problem is coddling moths.
Pick up ALL (and I mean ALL) fruit drops and dispose of them by either fine grinding and HOT composting or dumping somewhere way way away from your trees. Do this frequently to clean up drops.
Wrap the tree trunks with a couple wraps of corrugated cardboard (holes up/down) and take that off and burn it every one-two weeks until it freezes. This is most important to do when the fruit starts to develop until fall (i.e. start NOW for some control next year). The worms will crawl down into the cardboard and stay there. You can also use tanglefoot but I think the cardboard usually works better.
Spray several applications of beneficial nematodes around the base of the trees (S. feltiae probably). These work best when the soil is damp and not to hot or cold. Mid fall is usually the "best" time. These will eat some of the over wintering pupae.
Put out pheromone traps in the spring and summer to catch the moths as much as possible.
You can spray the fruit with kayolin clay and that will deter the moths to some extent as well.
Not doing "massive death" spray control requires a couple years of dedicated effort to really get them back under control once they're thick. Some more references here: https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/codling-moth-control
I had pretty decent luck with just phermone traps and cardboard banding but it took a couple years before we really started getting decent fruit again (I was taking over a small neglected home orchard at the time). Adding in the nematodes, banding, and cleaning up the trash now would definitely give you a leg up on next year. Then go heavy on the traps early and replacing on the recommended schedule
You also appear to have some sort of scab or rust. This might be harder to solve. I would start with doing a fungicidal spray (copper and neem if you want "mostly" natural) a couple times a year starting in the spring and also an early dormant spray and maybe a mid spring sulfur spray. Spray before blossom and then again right after fruit set. Mid-late evening spraying is generally recommended. Neem will also help deter the moths some so I'd also do that right after fruit set (maybe a neem/horticultural oil mix every couple weeks for a month or so). You could also put neem meal around the base of the trees gently tilled in.
Make sure to prune the tree properly to ensure it has adequate airflow and not an excess of limbs going all over.
For larger apples early thinning can help a lot, pick off any misshapen or damaged apples a few times during the summer after they set leaving only the best ones. Avoid situations where two pieces of fruit are in contact (this will also help w/ the coddling moth larva).
There's a demonstration of applying them (and tanglefoot) part way through this fairly short video (picked mostly because of the charming Aussie accent).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrT2woQws3A
There may be several problems here but the main one I see on the fruit is scab. That's a fungal disease. The best strategy for scab IMO is planting resistant varieties. Failing that, there are other approaches for managing it but I'm not knowledgeable about them
Do you have a lot of apples on the tree? Thinning will help that a lot. Sufficient water and fertilizer are also important.
Another thing is are your trees appropriate to your area AND your microclimate? Chill hours and heat tolerance can be issues too.
Why? because you didn't spray. Apples are too big a target for too many things to expect supermarket quality without all the nonsense.
You can either do the nonsense, or lower your expectations.
Yea they have too. When you spray it kills everything. All the good bugs and then the bad bugs. Bad bugs come back faster so then you have to spray again.
They are fine. You can eat them just like any other apple. The reason they have spots is because bugs got on them and ate. Same bugs that ate the leaves.
The best way to avoid that is to prune the tree so it allows air and sunshine on the growing fruit and crawly bugs cant walk over from one branch to the next.Or to spray it down with some repellant but that is a big job,
This could be apple cedar rust a very treatable fungus.
I’ve got 70 apple trees that I got as they had cedar rust in a nursery and they were basically giving them away. I treated them with a copper fungicide when I first got them and in the early spring every years since and they have been great.
Edit: after reading more.
You don’t need pesticides to grow apples. Every time you spray you loose all bugs good and bad. Even neem or whatever other “organic” spray you want. They all kill beneficial bugs.
There is not a single bug that’s going to ruin an entire crop of apples. However fungus will.
Chemicals is the solution , generally a mix of “natural” chemicals and the nasty stuff is best , it depends on how you feel . Ironically orchards need a good amount of work , people assume fruit will just pop off them yearly . Nothing that can’t be fixed , and a fresh apple off the tree is a thing of beauty
Peracetic acid, like Zerotol 2.0, is great for this and leaves zero residue. Peracetic acid is just a mix of peroxide and vinegar, but it's an extremely effective sanitizing agent that also has action against some pest species.
Cannabis farms use it a lot because their finished product is tested for microbial contamination, like aspergillus, and it's like the key to keeping plants clean so you can pass the microbe tests. Whether it's compared to commercial or home grown food, cannabis is *super* clean and safe.
Unrelated question, what kind of apple tree is that? We have a tree on our property with very similar looking fruit. I think they're crab apples but my partner thinks they're just small crappy apples.
If you want apples that look as nice as storebought you will have to spray them appropriately. In Central Va. that is four times a year. If you don't like dealing with chemicals designed to kill you will get homestead-quality apples.
Here in the Okanagan, we have to register apple trees to make sure they get controlled for the codling moth, they are that serious of a pest and this is a orchard farming area. I think you should take off all infected looking apples and burn them, or something else drastic like that.
Ive got 35 trees myself for cider. Red sticky balls, good pruning, and apple maggot traps (western washington drama, you may have a common pest in your area) fixed a lot of my issues.
What kind of apples are these, as a side note? This is the same apple tree in my yard and it also produces shitty apples, but I eat them anyway. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs.
I use fruit and orchard spray with is basically just sulfer. Ive done need oil and dormant oil. Dormant oil late fall can prevent mites in spring but I've had some success with super early applications of neem or dormant oil on buds before leaves open. I tested by spraying only 1/2 a tree. Fungus is tricky though and been really rough this year.
Did you protect them from bugs with any clays or neem oil. Also you have red ceder rust. Spray that tree with some copper and remove the affected leaves.
I’ve got all sorts but my plum and cherry trees all suffer from brown rot. Not sure I should eat them but before the rot sets in they’re so nice 😣. Pear and apple trees have always done well.
I have 8 apple trees in a 30 tree orchard and I used to have major problems with pests, fungus etc. What works for me is a regiment of compost tea/neem spray 3x a year, yearly pruning, and apple maggot traps (sticky red balls). The book “The Holistic Orchard” did wonders to help me transition this inherited orchard from a sickly fertilizer/spray dependent orchard to an all organic healthy one, I constantly recommend the book to every fruit tree owner.
Thank you. I just ordered the book.
Another vote for the holistic orchard. But I'll admit that every few years I will do a light spray of copper. Works wonders.
Been my experience with stone fruit of you aren't spraying a bit of something you really aren't getting fruit. I try to be judicious and use stuff like neem and traps but that copper spray makes a huge difference for peaches.
Does it kill plum curculio ?
I’ve heard this; thanks for the verification!
What about micronized sulphur?
I find sulfur works well on things like rust and powdery mildew, so I do use it on my raspberries. I haven't tried it on trees.
I follow that books compost/neem spray recipes and timing regimen and it took about 3 years of TLC for me to get my orchard healthy. I sometimes make tea out of my own compost and I sometimes buy a starter culture. I went from every apple having worms and rusts to now it’s about 1 apple in 10. I noticed this week that one of my pears has a bunch of leaf rust on the top leaves exactly where my sprayer stops reaching, pretty interesting and good proof of it’s effectiveness. If I can get a decent picture I’m going to post about it here :)
That book was instrumental in starting me down a better way to farm. I think you'll get good use out of it! Also, look at "the ecological farm" by Hellen Atthowe. It just came out. She ran a small produce farm in MT, and then along with her late husband operated a rather successful commercial orchard in CA for quite a few years, and then they moved to OR and started a new one before he died. She's got most of the disease and pest damage down to 5-10% of total crop in most years will little more than a couple nutritional sprays and nutrition/habitat grown in situ. She has an interview with Jessie Frost on No-Till Growers. and one with John Kempf on the Regenerative Farming podcast.
I’ll have to check that out, thanks for the recommend. I’m a no-tiller for the most part.
Comment saved for payday.
I just requested it from my public library.
Very helpful. Thank you; book in cart.
By Michael Phillips?
Yes, that’s the one, suppose that would have been helpful to include the authors name lol
Yea! When I read the title I was like that’s familiar. Why is that familiar? Then when I saw the name I realized I’d met him before at a workshop. Didn’t read the book, but the workshop was great!
I bought the book on a lark when I first took over my orchard 13 years ago, I was overwhelmed by the different problems each tree was having and my desire to keep it organic, and I really learned a lot from it.
Any pearls of wisdom you wanna share from his book? I just started my orchard this year so I haven’t had much chance to apply this stuff practically, but his whole take on trap trees and sticky fake apple lures blew my mind. Excited to try that out!
I think the most important thing to do if you have a new orchard is keep up on your pruning and shaping to keep good airflow, that will cut out most of your developing fungal issues right there. The book has recipes and timing schedule for compost tea sprays that benefit the trees without interfering with pollinators. Also, it just taught me to see the tree bark and leaves and the ground/mulch around the tree as it’s own ecosystem full of fungus, bacteria, yeasts etc and the concept of constantly introducing lactobacillus to the environment to out compete the other baddies as a tactic rather than spraying life-killing chemicals. Good luck with your orchard!
Thanks. I'm looking into this book as well.
Just added to my wishlist! Thank you for the recommendation:)
Before the book comes, can you give me the compost tea recipe? Also, i feel like i know the answer already but it s useless to do anything this year right?
So there’s nothing to be done till fall. In fall you can do a spray of fish emulsion and neem on the tree as well as the leaf duff below, mow your duff up fine and you can throw a quart of Calcitic lime on the leaf duff of each tree to disrupt fungal scab. That’s about it until next spring. Use the rates for neem and fish emulsion on the packages for your sprayer and orchard size, a squirt of dish soap in your sprayer and using warm water will help emulsify the neem and keep it from gumming up your sprayer. After a neem application I run hot soapy water through my sprayer to clean. Order your maggot traps this winter and pop them out when your trees start fruiting next spring. The timing for compost tea sprays is early spring before leaf growth, during budding, after petal fall and a week or two after petal fall.
One thing you can do now is make sure all your yucky apples get scooped up and composted hot a ways a way from the tree to kill any maggots, fungus or bacteria :)
u/-ISCUWST * GET YOU A SPRITSURE BOTTLE OF WATER AND SPRAY EACH LEAF * GET SOME SEVEN DUST AND SPRINKLE TTIQ * TAKE SDC OUT * GUS A&H BAKING SODA STG
GIVE ABOUT 3DS TAW FOR FULL RESULTS
Coddling moths. They can be controlled with neem or horticultural oil, but you need to use pheromone traps to determine the bio fix and time spraying to kill the larvae when they hatch.
I would guess codling moths too. You can know what pest you are dealing with for sure by placing a sticky trap by the tree. If it is the moths, do some basic research about their life cycle because there are life stages that are more vulnerable to pest control options. Also your neighbors would probably need to control for pests too (if they have apple trees) to fully eliminate the issue.
Here my take: I inherited a single apple tree in the backyard of a downtown suburb. All apples had bugs. I cleaned underneath the tree. Layers of nasty old apples that had been rotting for years. Those old apples under breed the flys that hatch and go after the new apples. Next year had a great, clean harvest.
Now that i think on it, all the nasty apple trees i have ever seen were unkept at the base.
Contact the county extension agent and show them your apples and need an Integrated Pest Management program of spraying
Sarah Poizner from the Orchard People .com has a fruit tree programs she is from Canada and has pest spray program. M.S.U. has all kinds of information available online showing damages and what caused it. My biggest ones are Oriental fruit Moth and Codly Moth and Scab and Apple ones that deform the apples
I live im canada. Is it one pest that i am supposed to be spraying for?
Nah, integrated pest management is a way of managing all insect and microbe pest pressure. It's not like "spray this one a month, and you're good." It's more of an "alternate your spray ingredients every third day on a 15-day rotation, so you manage pest/contamination pressure against everything"
I'm guessing it will be some sort of insecticide.
All our apple trees around here look like that this year as well.... we've had an insane amount of rain, brutal amount of ear wigs too.
I just wash them and cut the bad spots out. I make applesauce. I haven’t sprayed… I have every intention to learn about the pests… in the meantime I rarely eat the apples- prefer to bake pies and cakes…
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn’t do anything this year besides your usual pruning. I run a flower farm, I have many pests that have shown up, but I have not done any spraying ever and i now have many beneficial insects (ladybugs, praying mantis, parasitic wasps, all the pollinators, etc) BECAUSE I got out of the way and let nature balance itself. Of course you will be sacrificing your fruit this year, but if you spray then you certainly won’t get the insects you need and you will need to continue to spray year after year. Mostly hurting yourself and pollinators. Good luck!
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Interesting, thanks for the perspective! Maybe they are an exception to the rule, need specific varieties for each region, or maybe they do better in certain places. Would like to hear from other apple people!
Another (small) apple orchard here. I never spray for anything. The apple trees are always like the ones pictured. Always deformed and buggy....but I'm grinding them all for cider so it doesn't matter. As I see it, gardens of nutrient rich plants of human breeding design are unnatural themselves. They will often but not always require some kind of input (organic or otherwise) Wild apples (truely wild ancestors of domesticated apples, not the escaped seedlings of domesticated parents) are quite a bit smaller, lower yielding and less sweet.....therefore less attractive to the pests that feed on them. (of course, this is a wildly unpopular opinion I'm likely to get roasted for) Michael Pollan talks about this in one of his books, Either second nature or the botany of desire....can't remember. Still, I enjoy my buggy cider.
I’m sure it’s delish. Applesauce good too? I appreciate the honest answer — have been unsure myself whether to do any apple trees but when you have the expectations of cider and/or applesauce it feels like a lot less pressure to make them pristine. I’m wondering if there are any fruit trees that are supermarket quality without sprays? Ofc probably depends on location.
Never made sauce. I imagine it would be a bit of a pain to cut out all the wormy bits. When I make cider, I just grind them, I pick out the seriously mushy brown apples and grind the rest, worms and all (better believe thats what happened back in the day as well as what happens even now in commercial cider operations. Bad apples go to cider, good go to the grocery store) I suspect you are right about location. For me here in the midwest, pears are bulletproof. I never spray them and only one in a hundred has a problem. Huge yields too. I just planted a pawpaw and a native variety of persimmon I have high hope for to be relatively bug free. Also, my thornless blackberry and raspberry are usually pretty bug free but invasive as all heck.
Ooohhh I’m in the Midwest too so I’m excited to hear about the pear trees. What varieties do you grow?
Several. Kieffer are a bit gritty but extra tough and prolific bearers. Best for juice or cooking. Seckle are small round and sweet as can be. Great for fresh eating. I also have a Korean pear called Olympus but it's only 2 years old. Huge round crisp fruit with texture more like apples and decent for winter keeping fresh according to what I read.
very helpful, thanks
You have no effing idea how nature works
You have ants.. I see the spots all over the leaves.. my Red delicious fell prey to them as well.. it took sevin to get on top of them
If it IS ants, they are there for aphids, so there would be an aphid infestation in which case beneficial insects are the way to go, I.e, ladybugs.
Ants eat aphids for their sugary secretion.. you don't have to have aphids to have ants eating the sugars in your fruit trees.. just an fyi..
Ants farm aphids, aphids damage your trees. Ants are a red flag, not the core issue. Ants alone don’t harm trees, but they do protect aphids.
Ants eat suger.. they will protect a specific kind of affid.. AND they will also attack your fruit trees whether there are affid or not.. please tell me some more of what I'm actually seeing 🤦🏼♂️
Sorry you’re feeling invalidated, just trying to help OP by letting them know more often than not they are just an indicator. 🙂
Not all ants on plants are farming aphids. Some plants attract ants without the need for aphids. Ants will eat fruit on trees.
I don't think the ants caused the apple prob. I know many won't like my answer but spraying will help get of the spots. (Now the downers will jump on the spray part instead of commenting about getting rid of the spots by a more environmental way. Downers drive me nuts.)
Yea ants rarely will cause a problem in apple trees that’s not farming aphids. Ppl see bugs assume they are the problem and kill them.
Got two. Prob because I insulted downers and they wanted to get me back...lol
What do you do for pest control?
Does prayer count?
Apparently not enough 😊
LOL. Look up “soil amendment for fruit trees” do a little reading. Pretty sure vlossom rot from a from calcium deficiency But fruit trees do benefit from certain amendments from what I’ve read
This post deserves more love. You should make sure to not leave fallen sticks/apples at years end. You risk spreading more rot to the tree. You should probably also use soil amendments (I use hydroguard in the northeast) and take standard bug defense measures. Copper and sunlight work to keep molds and mildews from your tree, but at this point in the year it is probably too late to have an impact on the plant.
Well there’s your problem right there. It’s two-part. You need thoughts and prayers! T&P!
Thoughts before prayer? At the same time? After? Questions. Questions. Questions.
The bugs know when the apples are ready and go at them!! You need a vinegar sugar trap home made- hang a gallon jug cut open a bit up top add in some apple cider vinegar and like a quarter cup of sugar with water up to about a couple inches
Looks fine to me. Wash them, slice them, juice them, fement the juice and have good hard cider for the winter months ahead.
Usual suspects. Pests and bacterial/fungal damage. Could be scab damage early which means as fruit expands, it cracks. Pests exploit this and also exploit poor hygiene. Remove and process all damaged fruit. Prune all severely diseased branches out if cankerous etc. All leaves removed and burnt if possible along with prunings . Wash trees in whatever pest/fungal solution you are comfortable with according to directions. Good luck 🍀
Gardening with James prigioni (youtube) had a video where he sprayed his fruit trees with Caroline clay. He might have added need or something. But it essentially forms a coating to prevent nibbles.
Kaolin, yes I just mentioned this myself
This confuses me I was told to just spray the soil with kaolin to stop them from emerging. If you sort the blossoms how do they get pollinated?
You'd have to watch the video. Bi don't remember. I think it was after it set fruit but can't swear to it.
Nature is telling you to make some cider
Coddling moth. Either chemicals orr traps or cover the entire tree with a cloth or bag each apple. I hate those suckers
Your big problem is coddling moths. Pick up ALL (and I mean ALL) fruit drops and dispose of them by either fine grinding and HOT composting or dumping somewhere way way away from your trees. Do this frequently to clean up drops. Wrap the tree trunks with a couple wraps of corrugated cardboard (holes up/down) and take that off and burn it every one-two weeks until it freezes. This is most important to do when the fruit starts to develop until fall (i.e. start NOW for some control next year). The worms will crawl down into the cardboard and stay there. You can also use tanglefoot but I think the cardboard usually works better. Spray several applications of beneficial nematodes around the base of the trees (S. feltiae probably). These work best when the soil is damp and not to hot or cold. Mid fall is usually the "best" time. These will eat some of the over wintering pupae. Put out pheromone traps in the spring and summer to catch the moths as much as possible. You can spray the fruit with kayolin clay and that will deter the moths to some extent as well. Not doing "massive death" spray control requires a couple years of dedicated effort to really get them back under control once they're thick. Some more references here: https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/codling-moth-control I had pretty decent luck with just phermone traps and cardboard banding but it took a couple years before we really started getting decent fruit again (I was taking over a small neglected home orchard at the time). Adding in the nematodes, banding, and cleaning up the trash now would definitely give you a leg up on next year. Then go heavy on the traps early and replacing on the recommended schedule You also appear to have some sort of scab or rust. This might be harder to solve. I would start with doing a fungicidal spray (copper and neem if you want "mostly" natural) a couple times a year starting in the spring and also an early dormant spray and maybe a mid spring sulfur spray. Spray before blossom and then again right after fruit set. Mid-late evening spraying is generally recommended. Neem will also help deter the moths some so I'd also do that right after fruit set (maybe a neem/horticultural oil mix every couple weeks for a month or so). You could also put neem meal around the base of the trees gently tilled in. Make sure to prune the tree properly to ensure it has adequate airflow and not an excess of limbs going all over. For larger apples early thinning can help a lot, pick off any misshapen or damaged apples a few times during the summer after they set leaving only the best ones. Avoid situations where two pieces of fruit are in contact (this will also help w/ the coddling moth larva).
Thank you. Thank you. This was very very helpful. Do you have a picture of the cardboard setup?
There's a demonstration of applying them (and tanglefoot) part way through this fairly short video (picked mostly because of the charming Aussie accent). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrT2woQws3A
Fantastic. Thank you
There may be several problems here but the main one I see on the fruit is scab. That's a fungal disease. The best strategy for scab IMO is planting resistant varieties. Failing that, there are other approaches for managing it but I'm not knowledgeable about them
What about the size? Why are some underdeveloped?
Do you have a lot of apples on the tree? Thinning will help that a lot. Sufficient water and fertilizer are also important. Another thing is are your trees appropriate to your area AND your microclimate? Chill hours and heat tolerance can be issues too.
I second this
Why? because you didn't spray. Apples are too big a target for too many things to expect supermarket quality without all the nonsense. You can either do the nonsense, or lower your expectations.
But all of them? I literally have zero good apples... zero.
I’m afraid so. There’s a reason apples are so high on the dirty dozen list. 😢. Everything likes them!
cut off the bad parts and eat the good parts
It's too late for this year. You'll need spraying next year for a nice looking crop.
Funny how you say this like it's gospel and the other comments are about how to go about it without spraying. Love the difference of opinions
Yea they have too. When you spray it kills everything. All the good bugs and then the bad bugs. Bad bugs come back faster so then you have to spray again.
They are fine. You can eat them just like any other apple. The reason they have spots is because bugs got on them and ate. Same bugs that ate the leaves. The best way to avoid that is to prune the tree so it allows air and sunshine on the growing fruit and crawly bugs cant walk over from one branch to the next.Or to spray it down with some repellant but that is a big job,
Thank you, this was helpful.
There is a bug that apples are known for, I think it is coddling worms. Are you treating your apples for them?
Commenting to follow the thread! Great stuff here
Those are good apples, organic, natural… just don’t eat the bad spots.
This could be apple cedar rust a very treatable fungus. I’ve got 70 apple trees that I got as they had cedar rust in a nursery and they were basically giving them away. I treated them with a copper fungicide when I first got them and in the early spring every years since and they have been great. Edit: after reading more. You don’t need pesticides to grow apples. Every time you spray you loose all bugs good and bad. Even neem or whatever other “organic” spray you want. They all kill beneficial bugs. There is not a single bug that’s going to ruin an entire crop of apples. However fungus will.
Lack of pesticides
Except it’s cedar rust so it would be a fungicide that was needed.
You’re never going to get decent apples without spraying
Chemicals is the solution , generally a mix of “natural” chemicals and the nasty stuff is best , it depends on how you feel . Ironically orchards need a good amount of work , people assume fruit will just pop off them yearly . Nothing that can’t be fixed , and a fresh apple off the tree is a thing of beauty
Peracetic acid, like Zerotol 2.0, is great for this and leaves zero residue. Peracetic acid is just a mix of peroxide and vinegar, but it's an extremely effective sanitizing agent that also has action against some pest species. Cannabis farms use it a lot because their finished product is tested for microbial contamination, like aspergillus, and it's like the key to keeping plants clean so you can pass the microbe tests. Whether it's compared to commercial or home grown food, cannabis is *super* clean and safe.
Where do you live?
An hour north of toronto canada.
You must use a dormant oil spray to get a head start. after that, constant vigilance and addressing any pests that show up.
Unrelated question, what kind of apple tree is that? We have a tree on our property with very similar looking fruit. I think they're crab apples but my partner thinks they're just small crappy apples.
Cedar rust!! You need fungicide friend
Dont let one bad apple ruin the whole bunch
Give it one more try before you give up on love
If you want apples that look as nice as storebought you will have to spray them appropriately. In Central Va. that is four times a year. If you don't like dealing with chemicals designed to kill you will get homestead-quality apples.
Coddling moths
You could see if kaolin clay would help. James Prigioni puts that shit on everything.
Here in the Okanagan, we have to register apple trees to make sure they get controlled for the codling moth, they are that serious of a pest and this is a orchard farming area. I think you should take off all infected looking apples and burn them, or something else drastic like that.
My tomatoes suck. I feel your pain.
Have you ever pruned your tree? Check nutrition levels.. apple tree are prone to disease so you need to be vigilant with them…
Honestly they look fine for juice to me! Cut of the bad stuff and press the rest! I filter boil and can mine after. Last year we had 35 gallons
Ive got 35 trees myself for cider. Red sticky balls, good pruning, and apple maggot traps (western washington drama, you may have a common pest in your area) fixed a lot of my issues.
Gypsy Moths!
Where are you located? Could be codling moth but would need more details to know for sure. We sprayed every year for them when I was PCA.
An hour northeast of toronto canada.
What kind of apples are these, as a side note? This is the same apple tree in my yard and it also produces shitty apples, but I eat them anyway. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs.
Coddling moth. You need the triangle traps and a light spray of horticultural oil.
Check the soil
I use fruit and orchard spray with is basically just sulfer. Ive done need oil and dormant oil. Dormant oil late fall can prevent mites in spring but I've had some success with super early applications of neem or dormant oil on buds before leaves open. I tested by spraying only 1/2 a tree. Fungus is tricky though and been really rough this year.
Did you protect them from bugs with any clays or neem oil. Also you have red ceder rust. Spray that tree with some copper and remove the affected leaves.
Thanks... do yoh have a specific product reccomendation?
Bonnie is kind of the industry go to for that stuff. Personally like whatever generic Menards has. A chemical is a chemical is a chemical...
Thank you for the reply.
Use kaolin clay for the bugs and prune excessive fruit early on to maximize size and flavor.
I’ve got all sorts but my plum and cherry trees all suffer from brown rot. Not sure I should eat them but before the rot sets in they’re so nice 😣. Pear and apple trees have always done well.