Kitchen Garden Forum

My neighbor went along pointing at bits on my fruit trees basically saying they had die back. The Pear Tree has scab which with careful observation & pruning I am gaining some control over & actually have fruit that are unmarked this year, so pretty sure that is what she saw on that tree.

The Apple Tree just has a few branch tips showing a similar pattern to the Pear Scab where the leaves at the very tip die & again I just prune this off & the apples are unaffected.

However my Victoria Plum has a massive branch which is nearly 1/2 the tree width & the whole thing is dead. It was fine a couple of weeks ago & has loads of fruit also dying, so it has been pretty sudden. Now if I saw this massive branch off I will have a gaping wound as I would put the width of it at about a foot.

Firstly does it sound like die back on all the trees? And secondly how & when do I deal with the Plum? Plum Beauty is right beside it & showing no symptoms & the Russet next to the affected apple is also fine to date.

Westi

It seems to me the most likely plum problem is silver leaf. If when cut back into it there is a brown core it is even more likely. You can try cutting off everything obviously dead, if there is a brown core where you cut it you haven't gone far enough, but I think the odds of saving it are small. A neighbour had a similar problem and I was amazed how quickly the rest of it died after pruning. Sorry to be pessimistic but it really doesn't sound good.