The past several years have brought us cool temps and above average rainfall during the month of May.  These conditions are ideal for infection of Crabapple foliage by the fungal organism known as Apple Scab.  If you have ever picked apples from an apple tree and noticed that some of the apples seemed to have small blackened spots that looked like a scab, you have seen this disease and may not have realized it.  Apple Scab infection has been widespread the past several years, due mainly to the weather conditions during the month of May.

Apple Scab spends the winter in a dormant state, residing on the infected fallen leaves from the previous season's growth.  Thus, sanitation is one of the easiest means of minimizing Apple Scab infection on this season's foliage.  But simply keeping all the fallen leaves and fruit cleaned up will not prevent Apple Scab. 

If your Crabapple lost much of its foliage last year during June and July, it undoubtedly was infected with Apple Scab.  This disease starts out as a spore that  lands on an unprotected leaf causing initial infection.  First symptoms of Scab infection are visible as small olive-green lesions on the foliage.  With many Crabapple varieties, this initial infection causes the tree to form an abscission layer where the leaf attaches to the stem, the leaf prematurely turns yellow, and drops off the branch.  Severe infections of Apple Scab can cause defoliation of over 75% of the leaves in some varieties of Crabapple.

Sound familiar?  If you have a crabapple that blooms beautifully in the spring, but loses so many leaves that it looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree by July 4th, you might consider applying a fungicide to prevent infection.  Just about all fungicides are used as  preventative measure, rather for curative purposes.  In other words, any leaf that has a coating of a particular fungicide can fight off the attack by the disease spores, much in the same way that a good coat of paint will prevent rust from forming on a piece of steel.  After spraying, the leaf is covered with this protective layer of fungicide (like spray paint on metal) and when the disease spore lands on a protected leaf, it is actually making contact with the fungicide, which prevents it from infecting the leaf.

Over the years, we have seen poor performance by several fungicides that were supposed to prevent infection of Crabapple foliage by Apple Scab.  However, we 

have found one chemical that works extremely well and it is called Propiconazole.  First introduced over 10 years ago as a turf fungicide called Banner, this excellent fungicide is now available in consumer packaging and is known as Fertilome Liquid Systemic Fungicide.  This product is on our shelves at this moment, just waiting for an opportunity to protect your beautiful Crabapples from unsightly defoliation this summer. 

 

Fertilome Liquid Systemic Fungicide is available at Four Seasons in 3 sizes: 8 oz, Pints & Quarts and is priced from $9.95 to $24.95.    Don't let your trees end the summer looking like this:     Now is an ideal time to protect your Crabapples from Apple Scab with Fertilome Liquid Systemic Fungicide..... the very BEST fungicide we have ever used for controlling this problem.