In article ,
"Drakanthus" writes:
|
| A young pear tree which I bought a few months ago from a local garden centre
| is showing signs of what I think may be fireblight - according to my fruit
| tree book. I'm a novice regarding fruit trees so am not confident about my
| diagnosis. However I understand this is a notifiable disease and emailed
| DEFRA but they are not interested since I am not a professional fruit tree
| grower and just emailed back an URL to their page - which I'd already looked
| at in the first place. This sounds a bit like ignoring cases of SARS if it
| is not in a hospital or cases of foot and mouth if the animals are kept as
| pets. Presumably the disease cannot spread in such circumstances to nearby
| fruit trees in mine and neighbours gardens!!!

To be fair to them, the notifiability was an attempt to stop it
spreading - as it failed, there is no point in continuing. I believe
that it is still notifiable north of Newcastle, or somewhere. That
does not exclude the incompetence of spreading misleading information
and perhaps even failing to stop the spread. But what do you expect
after the the Whitehall mandarins and the ineffable Thatcher eliminated
the Scientific Civil Service as a functioning entity?

| Is this fireblight? Should I wait and see what happens or destroy the tree?

I don't know, but it may be. You can treat fireblight to some extent
by spraying it with Benlate, Bordeaux mixture and a few other things.
Yes, I know it's not a fungus. Benlate is now illegal for use by
private citizens, because it caused major birth defects when used
by pregnant women in commercial horticulture; as far as I know, no
extra safety conditions were placed on its commercial use when it
was removed from private availability.

My advice is to cut back affected branches hard, and spray the rest
with Benlate if you have it and Bordeaux mixture if not.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.