Question
QUESTION: Hi!
Can you shed some light on to what could have possibly killed my two youngest(going on third year) apple trees? They seemed healthy last year and they just never budded out this year so I cut into some branches to investigate and discovered they were dead. My 7 year old Fuji is fine and full of apples but I am stumped as to what happened to my other two trees. The base of the trunks look dried out with some splitting and peeling bark and the branches look discolored throughout the trees. I do have an issue with fire blight here but I am good about trying to keep it pruned out and it certainly has never been bad enough to kill a tree. I did find a borer in one of the branched I cut into but I do not see evidence of any major boring activity. Could it be some sort of fungal disease? The weird thing is the trees were not next to each other and one of the trees that died is next to my healthy Fuji tree. Thanks for any help you can give me with this question!

ANSWER: Hi Doreen,  You do not say what the variety of trees the apples were.  To me it sounds like they died of a freeze.  Maybe they were to young to take the cold.  I do not know where you are writing from.  The splitting of the bark sounds like freeze or drowing like too much water.  Only you would know the answer to this.  kathy

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QUESTION: Hi,the two that died were a Winesap and a Golden Delicious. I live in Western North Carolina and we had a very mild winter and they are both planted on a slop with good draining soil so definitely not a freezing or water issue. I really do try to follow all good gardening practices regarding pruning, fertilizing, clean-up etc. but here in NC if I do not spray I cannot have anything. I have fire blight, codling moths, plum curculios and cedar apple rust that I fight every year with my apple, pear and plum trees. Is it possible to have organic fruit trees with all these diseases to contend with? Thanks again!

Answer
Hi Doreen,  Yes it is possible to grow with out poison.  I have been using a product called Atomic Grow for over three years now.  My fruit trees are so beautiful and growing bug free.  Atomic Grow raises the brix in the plant which is the sugar content.  The sugar makes the tree healthy and bugs go to plants that are sick.  Sometimes we can not see they are ill until it is too late.  Bottom line if you have bugs, fungus, borers you have a sick tree and it needs to heal.  kathy