- Hi, thanks for joining us for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

There's not much that's better than biting into a juicy apple from your very own apple tree.

Today, we're gonna talk about apples and how to take care of them.

That's just ahead on the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to the Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Apples are one of the easier tree fruits to grow.

Today, we're going to spend the whole show talking about them with retired Extension agent, Mike Dennison.

We're going to talk about the most common diseases and we're going to prune an apple tree.

But first, let's get started at the beginning.

Picking the right variety for your garden.

Let's talk about apple tree varieties.

- All right.

- What kinda information you have for us?

- I got some good information.

- Ah, yes, you do.

- There's lots to choose from.

- Okay.

- There are 5,000 varieties, worldwide.

- Five thousand.

- And only, and fortunately, only 2,000 of them are grown in this country.

- That's a lot.

- So we only have 2,000 to choose from.

- Okay [laughs].

- And what I did is I did a little searching around, and for homeowners, I think disease resistance is very important because most homeowners, and I'm one.

- Yes.

- I don't do as a good job spraying my apple trees as I need to.

And so if I can have some disease resistance, then that's gonna help me produce a nice apple.

- Okay.

- Purdue University did an excellent job comparing different varieties and looking at disease resistance.

And I have some information from Purdue that I wanna share with you.

And it's got hundreds, probably a hundred varieties plus - Wow, that's a good chart.

- In this publication.

And it's highlighted the ones that are resistant to apple scab, which is one of the primary fungal diseases of apples, fire blight, juniper rust, and powdery mildew.

And let me just list these off.

And the first one is CrimsonCrisp.

It is very resistant to apple scab, moderately resistant to powdery mildew and fire blight, and susceptible to the rust, cedar apple or juniper rust.

- Okay, right.

- The Enterprise is a variety that's resistant to scab, fire blight, juniper rust, susceptible to powdery mildew.

Florina or Querina is another one that's resistant to everything except the juniper rust.

Freedom is resistant to all of those four different diseases and problems.

Goldrush, very resistant, moderately resistant to apple scab and fire blight, in that order, but susceptible to the rust and powdery mildew.

Liberty, resistant to all four.

Macfree, resistant to all four.

Nova Easygrow is resistant to everything except the juniper rust.

- Okay.

- NovaMac is very resistant to all four of those diseases.

Nova Spy is resistant to, I don't understand this, it's resistant to apple scab, susceptible to juniper rust, moderately resistant to powdery mildew.

And under fire blight, it has not applicable.

So I assume they didn't test it.

Prima is very resistant to apple scab and powdery mildew, moderately susceptible to fire blight, and very susceptible to juniper rust.

Priscilla, resistant to all four.

Pristine is the one that I'm familiar with, is very resistant to apple scab and resistant to fire blight, susceptible to juniper rust, but resistant to powdery mildew.

Sir Prize, resistant to apple scab and powdery mildew, but susceptible to fire blight, and the rust.

William's Pride is the last one that's very resistant to apple scab and juniper rust, and resistant fire blight and powdery mildew.

No matter what varieties you get, you're gonna need to follow a spray schedule, home orchard spray schedule.

The local Extension Office and get whatever's recommended in your area.

- Yeah, spray guide.

- I'm gonna tell you what it's probably gonna be.

I'll tell you what it is for here in Tennessee.

You know, it's basically, you know, just at bud swell, an oil with Captan.

The fungicide.

Captan is the fungicide that's gonna be mentioned.

That's what we recommend in Tennessee.

Now maybe some of the newer varieties or newer fungicides out there have labeled for apples.

But in our home orchard spray guide, it's still Captan.

- Still Captan.

- Yeah, and if you have a history of fire blight during bloom, early, mid, late bloom, probably three applications of streptomycin or Agri Strep 17 or something.

That's to combat the fire blight.

After bloom, start with your cover spray 7 to 10 days after that last bloom spray.

Spray with Captan plus malathion, and do not use an insecticide during bloom.

You don't wanna take out your honeybees.

But then every two weeks, if your spray doesn't get washed off, go with that Captan plus malathion, and that's pretty simple.

You can mix it yourself or you can find it in home orchard spray, a commercial spray.

Be careful.

Do not use a home orchard spray that has carbaryl in it.

- Right, right.

- Because carbaryl can cause apples to thin.

Apples need a certain amount of cool weather, they need a certain number of chill hours.

- Right.

- And let's talk a little bit about that.

- Okay, let's do.

- Chill hours, a simple way of putting is pretty much the number of hours below 45 degrees minus the number of hours above 60 degrees.

- Okay.

- That you have in the wintertime.

In the Orlando area, it's got zero chill hours.

And you get up to, you know, up northern pier, northern part of the panhandle, south Georgia, south Mississippi has only, you know, 200 to 400 hours.

And then it goes on up and you get up into the Great Lakes area, 1,400 chill hours.

- 1400.

- And with peaches, the raised variety will tell you the chill hours required for that variety of peaches.

With apples, you don't see that so much.

- Okay.

- Some of them do have the chill hours.

Most of them will simply say they will grow in the USDA Zone 6, 5, 8, or whatever.

And so you need to be familiar with the USDA Zones, growing zones, and then just, you know, select your apples based upon that.

- So what happens if you try to grow an apple in the wrong chilling zone?

- There are several things that could happen.

The worst thing that could happen is it could die.

If it doesn't get enough chill hours, the apple just won't survive.

If it's too low chill hours, it will bud out early and it'll freeze, you know, the freeze will kill it.

If it requires too many chilling hours, it will never fruit.

It will never, you know, those hours have to be met before it will fruit, and so it just won't do well.

- Right.

- At the best, it won't do well.

At the worst scenario, it will die.

- It will die.

- Yeah.

I looked at Georgia, I looked at Florida, Oregon, and Iowa, and there were a few varieties that just kind of showed up everywhere.

- Okay.

- And I'm gonna mention those, but some of these do not have some of the resistance that I mentioned.

But these varieties, I mentioned Golden Delicious, Red Delicious is also on that list.

Jonagold, Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith.

Those varieties grow pretty much all over the country.

I spent 12 years down on the Gulf Coast.

- Okay.

- And a lot of the apple varieties that do well in most of the country don't do well in extreme southern areas.

- Okay.

- Like some of the, you know, tropical or subtropical areas.

And when I started, I pulled up a Florida publication and brought back some old memories, some of the varieties.

Because varieties of apples that do well in south Florida and you know, south Alabama, down on the Gulf Coast, - Right.

- And the, I say south Florida, even the panhandle of Florida and southern part of Texas, and places like the southern California even, would be Ein Shemer, Elah, Maayan, Michal, and I don't know whether I'm pronouncing these right or not.

[Chris laughing] Shlomit.

They're all Israeli.

They're from Israel Republic varieties, and they do well in the extreme south.

In the northern part of Florida, the panhandle of Florida, and southern Georgia, and southern Alabama and southern Mississippi, places like that, Anna, Dorsett Golden, and TropicSweet would probably work for you.

Now all of these varieties that I just mentioned, don't try to grow them - Yeah.

- Up north.

- Right.

- Don't try to grow them much further north, the areas that I mentioned.

- Sounds good.

- But in looking at Oregon, let's go up in the northwest.

In addition to the apples that I mentioned, the Granny Smith, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Jonagold, Gala, Lodi, Earligold, Akane, Gravenstein, Elstar, Empire, and Newtown, and Braeburn are varieties that will work up there in those higher elevation, you know, colder climates.

- Right.

- Looking at Iowa, a lot of varieties will work in Iowa.

State Fair, I've heard of that variety.

McIntosh is an old variety.

My uncle used to grow those in an orchard up in Newbern, Tennessee.

Cortland, Freedom, Honeygold, Jonafree and Jonathan.

I'm sure Jonafree is an offspring of Jonathan.

- Right.

- Jonalicious also.

Spartan, Empire, Honeycrisp.

- Honeycrisp, yeah.

- That's a very, very good apple.

A very tasty apple.

Jonagold, Mutsu.

Those are varieties that will work in Iowa.

So you can grow apples in most of the country, and they are a lot less trouble to grow than peaches.

- Yeah, definitely that.

- Also, when you, you know, plant these varieties, make sure that you pay attention to the root stock.

- Sure.

- Because root stock determines the size of the tree.

These apples are grafted on to root stocks that can be dwarfing root stock, which makes the tree very small.

Semi-dwarf, which is a little larger.

- Yeah.

- And then full size, which would be a big old apple tree.

[upbeat country music] - Today, we are talking about apple trees.

Now that we have the right variety chosen, we need to look out for common diseases.

Let's talk about apple tree diseases.

Where would you like to start with that?

- I guess let's start with probably one of the most common problems that we have, and probably one of the earliest ones in the year, is fire blight.

- Fire blight, uh-huh.

- Fire blight is a bacterial disease.

It is common during cool wet conditions, which we have a lot of springs that are that way.

And the diagnostic, and I'm using a great publication from the University of Georgia.

This is the diagnostic, it's a pictorial, Diagnostic Guide to Common Home Orchard Diseases.

So this is a good one.

I wanna give full credit to the University of Georgia.

- Sure.

- And I just have the apple diseases here.

And fire blight, the symptom of it that you see is, it's called a shepherd's crook.

You'll have a dieback from the ends of the branches due to a bacterial canker that's on that branch.

And it may be 10, 12 inches, even longer.

The leaves will turn black.

There'll be a crook that will develop and they'll hang on the tree.

It'll just stay on the tree, it won't fall off.

This disease, very common on pears and apples, and the way you control it, if you have a history of problems, some varieties are more susceptible than others.

But if you have a history of problems, then you need to spray during bloom with, actually twice, early bloom and late bloom, with an antibiotic.

This is not something that's in your regular cover sprays for apples.

And it's AGRI-STREP is one, streptomycin, Agri Strep 17.

There's several of 'em out there that are listed for, labeled for fire blight control.

So that's the way you control that.

But it's gotta be taken care of before you see the problem.

- Okay.

- When you see the problem, there's no need to do anything.

Just wait 'til next year and try to take care of it.

- Okay, so do we need to prune out the dead?

- You do need to prune out the dead tissue, you know, later in the year.

You need to dip your pruning sheers in a solution of one part bleach to nine parts water, and to keep from spreading - That's a good point.

- That bacterial infection to healthy tissue.

- Okay.

- And, but yes, you do need to prune that out and dispose of it.

Don't put it in your compost bin, you need to either burn it or get rid of it.

Another very, very common problem that will show up later in the year, cedar apple rust.

We have a lot of cedar trees around in our area.

This disease spends about half, it's been part of its life cycle in a cedar tree.

When it's in the cedar tree, the gall, it's kind of a purplish looking gall that will erupt into a beautiful University of Tennessee orange, UT orange structure that will release spores.

And the spores will travel to an apple tree.

And on the apple tree, you have the bright UT orange spots on the leaf of the apple tree.

- All right, so how do you treat it?

- Well, there's a couple of ways you can.

If you cut down all the cedar trees within about a 10 or 15 mile radius, that will be one way to control it.

You take out the host.

But a more practical way to take care of it is to follow the home orchard spray guide for apple trees.

And you spray with a solution that contains Captan and malathion every 10 to 14 days.

Seven to ten days, actually, during the growing season.

And that will prevent that from being a problem.

- Okay, wow.

- Another problem, which is very common on apple trees is sooty blotch and fly speck.

- Yeah, know that one.

- When I grew up, I thought that all apples were supposed to have little spots on them.

[Chris laughing] And this disease or diseases, it's kind of several fungal organisms that caused this.

It's pretty much just on the skin of the apple.

- Okay.

- And you can peel it off.

If you scrub it off, you can actually scrub that off.

But it will reduce the shelf life of an apple.

- Okay.

- The home orchard regular cover sprays will take care of that.

- Okay.

- And that's, again, the home orchard sprays that contain malathion and Captan.

And the next disease I wanna talk about is bitter rot.

And it is a concentric circles in a rotten spot on the fruit of an apple tree.

It's caused by Glomerella.

And it has kind of concentric rings like a target, but sometimes, instead of being circular, they're kind of V-shaped.

And it actually sinks in to the fruit and it goes on into the fruit.

But again, the home orchard, you know, spray guide, following the regular cover sprays with a mixture of Captan and malathion, seven to ten days during the growing season will take care of that.

- Okay, now is that considered to be a fungus?

- It is a fungus.

- It is a fungus.

- It is a fungal, Glomerella is the fungal organism.

Another real common one is black rot.

- Wow.

- And this is kind of a brown, starts out as like a bruised area on the blossom end or the calyx end of the apple.

And then it spreads and it also goes up into the fruit.

It's Botryosphaeria, I can't say it today, Botryosphaeria.

But it is a fungal organism.

And it can be controlled by using, you know, regular cover sprays every 7 to 10 days with fungicide Captan and then malathion as an insecticide.

And I'm, you know, I'm throwing the insecticide in there because if you're gonna spray with a fungicide, you may as well control the insects while you're at it.

- Yeah, makes sense.

So with the black rot and the bitter rot, I mean, the food is still edible.

- Yes, except it gets up in the fruit.

You've gotta cut it out.

- Yeah, cut it out, okay.

- You've gotta cut it out.

Unlike the fly speck and or the earlier ones that were just on the skin.

- Right.

- This will go into the fruit and it will cause the entire, it can ruin the entire fruit.

And with most of these, the fruit will hang on the tree like a mummy, will hang on the tree.

And sanitation is important.

You need to pick those off and get rid of 'em.

Again, don't put them in your compost bin.

You know, put them in a Walmart bag, double bag 'em, get rid of 'em or something, and put 'em in the garbage.

- All right.

- Apple scab is another very common disease.

And it is present on the leaves.

Sometimes, it's called frog eye leaf spot.

- Ah, okay.

- But it has scabby lesions on the fruit and it tends to be more on the skin, but it's a very common problem in apples.

And it can be controlled again with a regular, you know, cover spray every 7 to 10 days.

- Wow.

- And you know, if you get rain and it washes it off, it's gone.

You need to go back out there and do it again.

It can be really hard during rain conditions.

- Sure.

- But again, the cover sprays contain Captan and malathion.

White rot is, again, Botryosphaeria.

It's the same genus, but a different species.

- Okay.

- It causes, and it has depressed, soft, enlarged lesions on the fruit.

And it really will wipe out your fruit pretty quick.

But it's more of a late season problem in apples and pears.

And it becomes soft really quick.

Most of the other rots, the black rot is kind of hard at first, it takes it a while to get soft.

But serious disease, sanitation, again, is important.

Remove the mummified apples that are hanging on the tree, but prevent it from occurring by using a home orchard spray guide.

And, you know, regular cover sprays with a material that contains Captan and malathion.

[upbeat country music] - One of the most important maintenance tasks for apples is pruning.

Correct pruning will maximize the amount and quality of fruit you pick.

Let's head on out to the orchard with Mr. D to see how it's done.

- We prune apples and pears the same way.

We prune them to a strong central leader.

This apple tree has a really good start.

Under ideal conditions, we will have a whirl of limbs at about 18 to 20 inches from the ground.

Four limbs evenly spaced around the trunk of the tree.

As we know in the real world, ideal conditions doesn't exist all the time.

This one has, let's see.

We've got one, two, three, four limbs right here.

I'm going to, because these two limbs are sharing the sun, I'm gonna take this one off right here.

And so I've got three scaffold limbs on my bottom layer, which is okay.

Now I'm gonna come on up this tree.

Ideally, I would have 18 to 20 inches before I get to the next whirl of limbs.

So I'm going to, these are a little close to this row of scaffold.

This one especially is a little close.

- Okay.

- So I'm gonna take it off and I'm gonna leave about a quarter inch.

I don't wanna get too close to the trunk.

I wanna leave enough room for that to heal.

Let's see.

These limbs are sharing the same, this limb is right above this limb, so I don't need that to happen.

And I'm gonna take this one off right here.

So now I've got one, two, three, four, five, six scaffold limbs, is probably a little much, but I'm gonna go ahead and leave that.

Now I'm gonna take everything else off.

Again, I'm gonna try to leave a space, ideally of 18 to 20 inches.

I don't quite have that here, taking all this off.

So I don't want anything to grow between here and here.

- Okay.

- And I'm gonna leave these buds, and you know, you'll have eventually limbs come out where these buds are.

- Right.

- And they will fill this void over here.

And so that's pretty well got the scaffold limbs chosen.

Now apples and especially pears, everything wants to be the central leader.

- Yeah.

- But I'm gonna teach this tree now.

We only have one central leader.

So this is trying to be the central leader here, so I'm gonna take it off.

- Right.

And then I have limbs crossing and that's not good, so this limb is invading this scaffold limb's space.

So I'm gonna take it off.

Again, leaving about a quarter inch so that it'll have plenty of room to heal.

- Mm.

- It's looking pretty good.

Now I'm gonna go to all of these limbs.

Okay, I don't want anything to grow back up toward the center of the tree, so I'm gonna take that off.

Then I'm gonna go to the tips of all of these limbs.

And I'm gonna take off about a third of last year's growth or, you know, six to twelve inches or something like that is a pretty good rule of thumb.

It's called heading back.

- Yeah.

- And this is a very important cut because when you head back apples and pears, you wanna make a cut above a bud that's growing, the bud that's pointing in the direction that you want the limb to grow.

And you want the limb to grow out away from the tree.

If you cut, make your cut above a bud that's growing back toward the tree, that limb will come out and it'll be, you know, kind of going back toward the center of the tree, which is not good.

- So is that a 45-degree cut, or?

- Just cut it off.

I'm gonna cut it off straight.

This one, this bud is headed away from the tree, so I'm gonna cut right above that bud, about a quarter of an inch above that bud.

- Okay.

- And then I'm gonna do that with all of these lower scaffolds.

I can tell where last year's growth was, so that one's going in the right direction.

I'm gonna go on up to this scaffold since I'm standing here.

Same thing, picking a bud that's growing away from the tree.

As I ease on around here.

On every limb, I'm gonna head it back to a bud that's growing in the directions I want it to go.

- Oh, yeah.

- Okay, this limb is going straight up trying to be the central leader.

So I'm gonna cut it above that limb right there.

Okay, easing around.

Just easing up the tree.

This limb would really like to be the central leader.

So I'm gonna do some severe - He's got to go, right?

- Instruction to it, and do that.

And we've got that in pretty good shape now.

That apple tree is pretty much ready to go.

It's gonna have a flush of growth now because anytime you prune a tree this time of the year, this is the best time of the year.

You know, the middle of March is the best time to do any pruning.

And when you prune limbs off, you've got a root system that's fully developed, and it's gonna compensate by giving you a flush of growth.

And the growth is gonna go in the direction that you want it to go.

The reason we do this is to kind of open the tree up, where you can do a really good job of spraying your fungicides and insecticides, so you get better coverage if you open the tree up a little bit.

You're also thinning some of the fruit off.

Most of these fruit trees will have 80% more fruit that they can actually set.

So we're taking some of the fruit off now.

We're gonna have to do some thinning also as we get, probably, unless Mother Nature comes in with a good heavy frost.

- Right.

- And helps us do a little thinning, but hopefully, we're gonna have to do some thinning on these fruit trees.

- Okay, and this what, a 3-year-old tree?

- I'd say that's about right.

- A 3-year-old tree, Arkansas Black.

- Good variety.

- Good variety.

- Good apple.

- I think this is a good one.

Appreciate that demonstration, Mr. D. - Most welcome.

- All right.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com, and the mailing address is Family Plot 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about growing apples in your yard, we have more videos and information on familyplotgarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]