How do I treat a Bramley Apple tree with a fungal disease?

Northumberland, United Kingdom

The leaves have black spots and are turning yellow and falling off. There are hardly any apples and it's usually a good cropper. The eating apple tree next to it seems ok, but should I treat that as well just in case it spreads?

29 Jun, 2009

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$fractal$

Fractal

Sounds like scab. Bramley does tend to have a biennial cropping habit anyway so it's probably just having a year off as it were but the black spots and yellowing do sound like scab which is similar to the black spot roses get (same plant family too).

Prevention rather than cure is always the only option here and I'm afraid you are probably too late to do anything with it now. Dithane alternating with another fungicide is probably the best way to go about it but you don't say how big the tree is. Spraying may not be feasible and being a Bramley, I suspect it's quite large (unless it's clone 20 on M27 rootstock).

Lets hope next year is better.

29 Jun, 2009

Ciderdrinker

what is Dithane is it a fungicide

8 Aug, 2009

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