Sweet cherry diseases: prevention, signs and treatment

There is hardly any at least one adult or child who is indifferent to cherries. The onset of summer is waiting impatiently, partly because this time of the year brings sweet and juicy berries. Probably every gardener, gardener would like to have his own sweet cherry in the garden in order to delight himself and his loved ones with excellent and tasty fruits.

However, often the cultivation of this tree is overshadowed by difficulties, which, first of all, are associated with the fight against harmful insects and diseases. Sweet cherry diseases, their prevention and treatment will be discussed in this article.

Bacteriosis (ulcer or cherry cancer)

As the name implies, bacteriosis is a bacterial disease. Trees at the age of 3-8 years are subject to it. Bacteria are carried by rain and wind. In winter, they live in the buds and vessels of the tree.

Wet and cold spring with frequent rainy and windy weather contributes to their spread throughout the organs of the plant.

The branches of the diseased tree are covered with ulcers, gum flows from them. On leaves and fruits, irregularly shaped brown or black spots with a yellow border appear. The peaches are covered with small brown sores.

The wood on these trees dies, the leaves die off. Sometimes the cherry is killed completely. Bacteriosis may not occur if the summer is warm and dry.

Treatment. At present, methods of dealing with this disease does not exist, not for nothing that it is also called cherry cherry. Each type of sweet cherry is characterized by a different susceptibility to bacteriosis.

Trees that receive the necessary nitrogen nutrition and moderate watering are not very susceptible to this disease.

Brown spotting (phyllostiktosis)

Often you can determine if your tree is healthy or not by carefully examining its leaves. They are the first to give out infected plants.

If suddenly during the inspection you noticed small brown spots on the foliage, then the diagnosis will be disappointing - your sweet cherry is sick with phyllostikosis or brown spot.

This is a fungal disease that will later manifest itself as black dots on the leaves, the spores of the pathogenic fungus. After some time, the leaves of the diseased tree wither and fall.

Treatment. Affected leaves must be collected and burned in time. Before bud break, treatment with 1% Bordeaux liquid, 1% copper sulphate, and nitrafen is recommended. Re-processing is carried out after flowering Bordeaux liquid (two to three weeks).

After another two weeks, it is desirable to spray the fungicide "Home". In the case of severe infection, another treatment is carried out in the autumn, after leaf fall. Use a 3% solution of Bordeaux liquids.

Since the spores of the pathogenic fungus, which excites brown spot, overwinter in fallen leaves under the tree, in the autumn it is necessary to carefully remove the dry leaves and dig the ground in the near-stem circle.

Holey spot (klyasterosporioz)

Another fungal disease - perforated spotting or klyasterosporioz - occurs in spring with small brown spots with a dark (dark red, crimson) border on the leaves, branches, buds, flowers.

As a result of loss of the affected tissues after one or two weeks in their place in the leaves holes are formed. Sick fruits are first covered with red-brown markings and in the process of growth acquire ugly forms.

The flesh on this place stops growing and dries up to the bone. If the disease spreads to the whole tree, it weakens over time and bears bad fruit.

Treatment. Branches and leaves affected by perforated spotting are cut and burned. The cuts are treated with a 1% solution of copper sulphate, rubbed with sorrel (three times at intervals of 10 minutes) and smeared with garden pitch or oil paint.

During the "pinking" of the buds, immediately after flowering and two or three weeks after it, the cherries are sprayed with 1% Bordeaux liquid or good copper (25 g per 10 l of water). Also for treatment after the removal of diseased branches use the drug "Chorus".

False tinder

False tinder refers to fungal diseases of the stem of sweet cherry. The main symptom of the disease - white rot in the wood. Usually it strikes a crack in the lower part of the trunk - a yellow, brown, dark brown growth is formed there.

Spores of a pathogenic fungus settle in wounds on the bark of trees resulting from sunburn, exposure to frost, or damage by pests. The diseased tree becomes soft and easily broken by the wind.

Treatment. In order to defeat a false tinder, uprooting and burning cherries will be the best fight measures. If this is not possible, then you should regularly inspect the tree and remove the growths that have appeared.

The wounds that will be formed as a result of this procedure will need to be cleaned, treated with copper sulfate and covered with garden pitch. For prevention, all measures should be taken to avoid mechanical damage to the cortex. It is recommended to whiten the trunk and skeletal branches.

Sulfur yellow tinder

Another fungal infection of the stem of cherries is sulfur-yellow tinder. It causes brown heartwood rot in which cracks with mycelium are formed.

The wood becomes brittle and breaks into pieces.Signs of the disease are fungi formed in a fissure of a bark with wavy hats of orange or light yellow color.

Treatment. To prevent this disease from developing on the cherries, it is necessary to take measures to prevent the formation of frost cracks in the bark. In the autumn it is important to whiten the trunks and skeletal branches. In the spring after a particularly cold winters to conduct dressing.

If it was not possible to avoid freezing and sunburn, these places should be cleaned, sanitized and painted over. When the mushrooms are settled, the tree must be destroyed or permanently removed and disinfected wounds.

Coccomycosis

Prolonged rains can provoke coccomycosis in cherries. Its characteristic symptoms are small brown-red spots on the leaves. The affected leaves become yellow at first, then brown, and eventually fall off. In the first years of the disease, the sweet cherry loses its fruits, and then it dies itself.

Treatment. Preventive treatment of sweet cherry from coccomycosis is carried out in the period of swelling of the kidneys. The first spraying is best done with copper sulphate (300 g per 10 liters of water).

When the buds begin to bloom, you need to spray the Bordeaux mixture. It is also important to comply with the agrotechnical rules for growing fruit trees, among which are the timely destruction of the affected leaves, fruits, and the digging of the ground under the crown of cherries.

For spraying, you can use such drugs from coccomycosis as "Hom", "Zorus", "Topaz", "Horus". So that the preparations are not washed off, they add soap to the solutions.

Catching Cherry

A very common disease is gummy cherry. Occurs on trees with damage as a result of frosts or affected by moniliosis, nodules or other diseases.

Manifested by secretions on the trunks of gum trees (glue), when freezing forming a transparent vitreous formation.

Treatment. To prevent disease, it is necessary to increase the winter resistance of the tree, fertilize it properly and water it. Frost masks should be cleaned, wounds should be disinfected and covered with garden pitch or nigrol putty (70% nigrol + 30% sifted furnace ash). In places of gum excretion, an easy furrowing of the bark is recommended.

Mosaic Cherry Disease

Mosaic disease is a viral disease that leads to a very strong weakening of the immune system in the cherries. Signs of illness: first, yellow stripes appear along the veins on the leaves, then the diseased leaves curl, turn brown and die.

The virus is spread by insects, during the grafting of diseased cuttings and pruning of diseased and healthy trees with non-disinfected tools.

Treatment. There is no cure. It can only be prevented - treating trees from insects, observing quarantine measures, using healthy planting material. From patients with cherries, unfortunately, have to get rid of.

Mosaic ringing

Symptoms of mosaic ringing appear on the leaves of cherry - pale green or whitish rings are formed on them, which later spill out, holes remain in their place.

Treatment. Same as with mosaic disease.

Mealy dew

This fungal disease is dangerous only for young seedlings and during the cutting. The disease is fraught with a slowdown in plant growth and premature leaf death.

The main symptom of powdery mildew is white (and eventually dirty gray) powdery deposit on leaflets and shoots. Sick sheets are deformed, dry and die.

Treatment. To combat the powdery mildew, a lot of drugs have been produced: Topaz, Phytodoctor, Strobe, etc. Also, they are applied three times with 2% colloid sulfur or 2% lime-sulfur decoction at 15-day intervals, spraying an aqueous solution of potassium permanganate and infusion of refractory hay.

Sweet cherry scab

Scab damages the leaves of cherries, brown spots appear on them. After some time, they roll up into a tube and dry out. Green fruits also dry out.

Treatment. Tillage, destruction of infected fruits and leaves, three times (during the isolation of buds, after flowering, after harvesting) spraying with chlorine dioxide (40 g / 10 l of water) or 1% Bordeaux liquid.

Gray rot (monilioz)

Signs of moniliosis are manifested in a change in the color of the shoots and branches of the tree — they acquire a brown hue. As the disease gets worse, the branches become lethargic, as if they were burned. Then small gray growths appear on the bark of the tree.

In a chaotic manner, growths also appear on the fruits of the sweet cherry, the berries begin to rot, dry out. On old branches, in places where gray rot has settled, cracks are formed, from which gum later flows.

Treatment. Since the fungus is the causative agent of Monilla cinerea winters on mummified fruits and branches, the timely destruction of diseased berries, branches and leaves is a prerequisite in the fight against gray rot.

The development of moniliosis is hampered by the autumn whitewashing of trunks and skeletal branches. As with most diseases, gray rot can be fought with fungicide sprays. It is also important to carry out preventive measures to eliminate harmful insects.

Tsilindrosporioz (white rust)

In case of white rust disease, the sweet cherry drops foliage by the middle of summer. The fungus infects the wood of the branches, and ulcers appear on them, from which the gum flows.

The bark becomes red-brown or black-brown.Trees weaken and can, without surviving severe frosts, shrink in the spring.

Treatment. Removal and burning of diseased branches. Since the infection does not penetrate through the healthy bark, it is necessary to follow the measures for its maintenance and immediately treat the cracks and wounds formed by stripping, disinfecting and smearing. Also need to deal with insects that harm the bark.

Dying off branches

In this fungal disease, single or group pinkish growths appear on the bark of dead branches.

Treatment. Pruning and burning fungus-affected branches. Treatment of wounds with garden pitch.

Prevention and protection of cherries from diseases

We described what kind of cherries are diseases and how to treat them. This information will help you in detecting problems with the growth of sweet cherries to diagnose them and immediately begin to eliminate them so as not to lose the crop.

However, preventive measures come to the fore when solving problems. Preventive protection of sweet cherries, in principle, is the same as that of all fruit trees. This includes:

• timely cleaning and burning of fallen leaves and rotten fruit;
• thinning thickened crowns;
• digging up radical soil plots;
• Preventive spraying before the start of the juice excretion: urea (700 g / 10 l of water), Bordeaux mixture (100 g / 10 l of water), copper sulphate (100 g / 10 l of water),
• repeated preventive spraying after the start of flowering;
• preventive autumn sprays after picking berries;
• treatment with drugs that increase the stability of sweet cherry to adverse conditions and phenomena, such as "Zircon", "Ecoberin".

Thus, the most effective remedy for diseases is compliance with agrotechnical rules and conscientious timely care, for which the cherries will thank you for the generous harvest of delicious berries.