Summat's up with one of my apples trees...

[Baldy]

Got given this about 3 years ago - tends to give me 6 or seven decent fruit but its not very prolific. Was hoping that as it got more established it would start providing more. ANyhow, today I noticed that many of the younger branched have gone brown and died off. Quite a few of the leaves have some leaf curl and brown spots. Blossom wilt maybe? Its got a handful of young fruit that look to be ok. No sure the photos will help but here they are anyway:

[burnie]

No expert here, but there looks to be a bit of canker on the right hand stem, it does look poorly, maybe severe pruning to see if it will throw up new clean growth?

[Baldy]

I've had an enthusiastic amateur hack at the worst of it but rain stopped play - I shall return with apocalyptic vengeance tomorrow (weather permitting)

[devonuk]

Badly cankered. Cut hard back to clean branches below the brown sunken bark or where the bark has peeled, remove prunings and bin or burn elsewhere. If it has canker on the main stem it is hopeless.

[Baldy]

Probably a goner then - will take a better look tomorrow - cheers. Where you located devonuk ?

[burnie]

My Howgate Wonder has some canker and it has had it for around 10 years, the apples are great and good quantity and it's not spread to the adjacent trees either, so for now I've left it to see how it goes. I remove the dead and dying and it is working for me.

[Lardman]

That's a bit shocking - how long has it been like that Baldy ? Do you remember what it was, you may do better with a variety which has a higher level of natural resistance. Most of the supermarket offerings were very canker prone.

[Baldy]

Was ok in feb. but I guess the fungus only gets going once it warms up a bit - I'll cull it as I don't know what it actually is and it hasn't been very productive.
Thanks all

[Guest]

If you were fussed you could cut out the canker (rather than prune it out) and cover with grafting tape. I done it last year to a variety I shan't name as people may turn violent towards me but it is fairing quite well at the moment.

[burnie]

This tree has been like this for a few years, I'm removing affected areas a bit at a time.

[nickdub]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread - I was having a look through some of the ones on fruit which I havedn't read before and came across it.

So just in case anyone has apple trees which are affected by canker, one tip which I haven't seen mentioned very often. If your tree has been planted for a year or two and you have canker in other trees nearby, take a clean sharp knife and dig the tip in low down on the trunk on the north side of the tree, then run the knife vertically upward slitting the bark at least as far as the first main branch. You can continue the slit underneath any branch as well if you wish to.

The idea of this is to release any tension in the bark of the tree (bark binding), and as it heals it forms a scar which canker usually will not cross.

A couple of provisos :- this is NOT a cure for canker but a sort of preventative a bit like a vaccine as it will stop canker ringing a branch if done in time. Secondly it must be done in bark which is not already affected by canker, so if you have canker on a branch avoid that bit when making the slit and stick to good areas of bark.