Oh Bother

For the first time since we planted our fruit trees, our early and late apricot and our prune have an abundance of fruit on them.  For the first time since we planted our orchard, the apricots, peach, prune, plums and nectarines have bacterial canker.  Oh bother, as Pooh famously said.  The good news is that, with proper treatment, the canker isn't terminal and it isn't a bio-security issue (phew!).  Treatment requires removing the affected limbs and spraying the cankers with copper.   It's not a hard job to do but it is time consuming because we need to soak our secateurs in a mild bleach solution for 30 seconds between each cut.  It's pretty easy hanging out in the orchard though on a lovely spring day.

The first obvious sign of the bacterial canker was dead leaves on the tree which were all stuck together with a very sticky substance. Then we noticed the same sticky substance dripping from the branches and running down the trunk.  Then we noticed it oozing out of some of the fruit. Boo hiss to that.

 

 

According to the good folks at the Department of Agriculture (we sent the above pics and some others to them just to make sure this wasn't something more serious) bacterial canker is generally caused by winter pruning, trees being exposed to wind driven rain or poor drainage.  We did prune our trees a little late this year but it was definitely well ahead of winter.  We will certainly be more careful with the timing of our pruning in the future.  The trees are outdoors so there's not a lot we can do about wind driven rain.   The drainage should be okay because we planted the trees in mounds. That said, we have got a lot of clay so this is something we can maybe look at too.  Overall, we're hopeful that with a little bit of effort the trees will be fine and we'll still get most of our lovely fruit.  Fingers crossed!!