How to protect "Melbu" from pests and diseases

Apple trees - one of the main trees in the gardens. There are many varieties with different ripening and taste. Nevertheless, they are all a valuable storehouse of vitamins. However, in order to achieve a good harvest, a gardener needs to save trees from diseases and pests.

  • Melba's main diseases and their treatment
    • How to protect the apple tree from scab
    • How to cure a tree from powdery mildew
    • Fighting fruit rot (moniliosis)
    • Cytosporosis plants
    • Symptoms and treatment of a bacterial burn
  • The main pests of apple trees, ways to combat harmful insects
    • Apple leafworm
    • Codling moth
    • Apple Blossom
    • Apple sawfly
    • Apple shchitovka
    • Hawthorn

Melba's main diseases and their treatment

Melba - quite famous variety of apple trees, famous for its incredibly tasty fruits and high yields. However, experienced gardeners are well aware of the problem of the poor resistance of this tree against diseases and pests, especially scab.

For this reason, in order to be able to feast on juicy apples, it is necessary to closely monitor the condition of the tree, to detect the characteristic symptoms of the disease in time and to professionally react to the problem that has appeared.

How to protect the apple tree from scab

External manifestations of scab, indicating the need to sound the alarm, there are characteristic spots on the leaves, initially olive-green, later black and cracked.

Starting with foliage, the disease quickly spreads both to the ovary and to the fruit, affecting the whole tree, so it’s impossible to get rid of the scab on Melba without spending a huge amount of time and effort.

Much better to think about prevention. To this end, in the fall, immediately after harvest, the following procedures should be performed: remove dried fruit, cut dead branches, trunk, if necessary, clean and whiten. Ground around the tree can be poured with urea (0.5 kg per bucket of water).

Important! All leaves that have fallen from the apple tree, must be collected and removed or burned.

Spring is also a good time for maintenance, but they should be carried out until bud break. It is useful to spray the tree with a 1% solution of Bordeaux mixture. If desired, as soon as the apple tree has blossomed, it can be re-sprayed with Bordeaux or with a solution of “Zineba”, “Kaptan” or “Kuprozan”.

Two weeks later, the last spray is applied,but in order to avoid burns, only a few branches should be treated with Bordeaux liquids and, having only made sure that there is no chemical reaction, spray the whole tree.

Scab usually begins to manifest itself at the end of May. Up to this point it is good to feed the apple tree with “Humate” or “Fitosporin-M”, then the application of numerous “chemistry” will not be needed in the future.

If the scab does hit the tree, the number of treatments per season can be increased to six.

How to cure a tree from powdery mildew

Mealy dew it appears as a thin, off-white bloom on the leaves, which is easily erased at first, but then begins to thicken and darken. Panting without oxygen and moisture, the foliage begins to turn yellow, curl into tubes, dry out and fall. Ovaries also fall off.

Fight powdery mildewas with scab, it is more difficult than to provide preventive protection. Every week, an apple tree is treated with potassium permanganate, copper oxide, iron sulphate, Bordeaux liquids or special preparations (for example, Topaz has proven itself), and if they are not at hand - with a soda solution of soda.

You also need to be careful with the use of nitrogenous fertilizers, since their abuse can provoke a disease.

Important! At the first signs of disease, the affected leaves or ovaries must be removed immediately.

Fighting fruit rot (moniliosis)

Fruit rot cause fungal mycelium, contained in last year's dried apples. If such affected fruits are not removed from the tree in time, the mycelium moves from them to healthy branches, where it winters beautifully and in spring strikes young fruits immediately after tying.

The disease begins with soft brown spots on apples, which grow rapidly, then white growths occur, the flesh of the fruit becomes brown and unfit for food, it falls.

Fruit Rot Treatment provides for spraying of "Quick", "Horus" and "Fundazole": the first - as soon as the leaves bloomed, the second - after the apple tree had blossomed, and the third - about three weeks before harvest.

In addition, you must comply with the following rules of prevention:

  • in the autumn it is necessary to dig up the trunk circle well;
  • regularly collect fallen apples and immediately remove the fruits that rot in Melba;
  • when harvesting apples do not allow them to be mechanically damaged.

Cytosporosis plants

Brown spots, similar to ulcers, appear on the bark of an apple tree. Increasing in size, they become reddish. The branches become brittle, on the cut you can see the characteristic dark threads of the mycelium.

Cytosporosis develops on the background of fertilizer deficiency and too abundant watering.

Treatment of the disease consists primarily of stripping wounds on the trunk to healthy tissue with subsequent treatment with copper sulphate (10-20 g per bucket of water) and smearing with garden pitch.

It is obligatory to export or burn cleaned bark and dried branches. This should be done in the spring, until the temperature rises above 15 ° C, when the pathogenic fungus begins to actively develop.

Before budding and after flowering, the apple tree is sprayed with HOM, and before flowering, with Fundazole. In the autumn the tree is useful to feed phosphate and potash fertilizers.

Symptoms and treatment of a bacterial burn

Characteristic signs of burn - the apple trees begin to curl and fall off the leaves, the apples shrivel and also fall.

The disease begins with soil poisoning and is often tolerated by the gardener himself,rather, with his tools with which he cultivates infected and healthy land or pruning diseased and healthy branches. The disease can also be “brought” with a new plant.

Bacterial burn is almost impossible to fight. It is better to completely uproot one tree than to lose the whole garden.

In order to somehow protect oneself, one should avoid purchasing seedlings in unknown places, disinfect garden tools after each use and, of course, destroy pests, as they also spread the infection. For prevention, it is also possible in the spring to spray the land on the site with a solution of copper sulfate.

The main pests of apple trees, ways to combat harmful insects

Fruit trees are threatened not only by diseases, but also by all sorts of pests. So, the main pests of apple trees, including Melby, are moths, moths, flower beetle, sawfly, scythophilus and haws, whose dangerous effects can be judged by the names themselves. We will understand what to do with each of these insects.

Apple leafworm

This little butterfly is unpleasant because it lays eggs on the young leaves of the tree,after which they curl into a tube, from which the name of the insect. Caterpillars, hatched, are able to eat the leaf completely, leaving only streaks.

To fight with the leaflet can be different. Sometimes it happens quite effectively physical destruction of the pest (burning folded leaves or attracting insect-eating birds to the garden) or creating special traps that prevent it from reaching the tree.

Can be used to kill insects folk methods: tobacco infusion, decoction of wormwood, potato or tomato tops.

And yet the most reliable to get rid of butterflies and caterpillars chemical preparations. This method is not very safe, so it is necessary to resort to it only in emergency cases - if the apple tree is affected by the pest strongly enough.

Important! The sheet worm is able to easily adapt to the action of various toxins, therefore, toxic chemicals must be constantly changed.
Since the caterpillars of the moth can move very quickly from tree to tree, it is necessary to process not only the diseased apple tree, but all the others.

Codling moth

Butterflies of this insect, in contrast to the leafworm, prefer to lay eggs in flower buds. Subsequently, the caterpillar gnaws a seed, gnaws out and goes to the next fruit, in the meantime the apple cannot ripen and falls off.

Did you know? One larva in its life can destroy 2-3 apples, while the insect is so prolific that the offspring of one individual can kill up to a thousand fruits.

For the prevention of moth infestation It is necessary to regularly collect the carrion, after gently shaking the tree so that the damaged apples do not remain on it, and twice a year - in autumn and spring - to clean the old bark, in which cocoons can remain.

In the stem there are natural enemies among insects. This can be used by planting as many flowering plants as possible on the site to attract such "helpers." It is noticed that the moth does not like the smell of tomatoes, so it is useful to plant them nearby. Sticky tape for flies are also used to control moths.

Apple Blossom

These bugs, as the name implies, destroy the bud, gnawing in it a cavity for laying eggs.

Preventive actions to combat this pest are similar to those described above - peel bark. Besides good to whiten the trees with a solution of freshly lime (1.5-2 kg per bucket of water).

At the same time, it is recommended to leave one tree untreated and it is on it to use mechanical means of fighting the beetle (shake them on the litter and drown them in a bucket of kerosene).

You can also spray the buds with Chlorofos.

Apple sawfly

This pest causes the fall of the ovary much earlier than it reaches the moth. Having gorged on, the larva gets out of the fruit, falls to the ground, digs in it for 5-15 cm, where it makes a cocoon and winters.

To combat pest An apple tree before and after flowering can be sprayed with Chlorofos or Karbofos.

Apple shchitovka

The insect eats the sap of the tree, which is manifested by small dark brown growths on the bark. A large number of shitovki can stop the growth of the apple tree, the tree dries and resets the color.

Did you know? The shield is very tenacious, its eggs are able to tolerate a thirty-degree frost, and the protective shell makes the insect insensitive to the action of various preparations.
As a preventive one should clean the tree trunks from weeds and young shoots, cut off dry branches, clean the bark, dig up the ground for better penetration of fertilizers into it, immediately destroy the shields found on apple trees.

For chemical processing trees in the autumn use copper sulfate, in the spring - "Nitrafen".

A few days after flowering, the insect larvae enter the active phase, so the tree should be treated with contact insecticides, for example, "Decis". The procedure is repeated for the growing season twice or three times.

Hawthorn

This pest weaves a nest from a web in the fallen leaves or on a tree, where it lays eggs for the winter, up to 500 pieces each. In spring, the larvae hatch and eat literally all the young parts of the tree.

Eggs overwinter in fallen leaves, fastened with cobwebs like a nest. There may be nests in the trees. In the spring, the hatched larvae destroy leaf and flower buds, young greens and flowers.

Did you know? Unlike the scythe, the hawthorn, fortunately, does not have a strong vitality, its appearance can stop for several years, after which it can reappear.
The hawthorn does not cause such massive damage to the trees as the moth, moth and other pests, so the fight against it is not so urgent - just care for the tree, destroy the insect nests found, and in summer, when the caterpillars can be seen on the leaves, treat the apple tree with insecticides.