A long way off, but I have fungicide questions for my large pear trees?

Derek Reese 29

5 year old buck +
Hello everyone,
I have 9 very large (30-40 foot tall) pear trees (possibly an Asian variety) in my front field. I also have 2 pear trees (Kieffer and a Buerre D'Anjou) that I planted near the existing tall pears in the spring of 2021.
The larger trees all are not doing great (some dying limbs, losing some bark) and all have black dots on the leaves (I have surmised that it is either some kind of leaf spot or scab, but I am not sure).
This year we had a pretty bad drought in the middle of the summer and the leaves fell early, as did the limited amount of fruit (last year there were 1000s of pears when we had a wetter summer).
I also noticed the same thing on my new Kieffer pear (it is around 12' tall). I think the drought may have only hurt the trees.
I have a few crabs planted in and around these pears, so I do not want my newer plantings to be affected by a disease or fungus from the older, weaker trees (they are all DR trees, but still).
Is there a product I can use on the larger trees that is not a spray, as spraying these trees is out of the question due to their height?
I am looking for something like a soil drench that anyone may have experience with? Thanks in advance!
I intend to fertilize the trees this spring.
 
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Hello everyone,
I have 9 very large (30-40 foot tall) pear trees (possibly an Asian variety) in my front field. I also have 2 pear trees (Kieffer and a Buerre D'Anjou) that I planted near the existing tall pears in the spring of 2021.
The larger trees all are not doing great (some dying limbs, losing some bark) and all have black dots on the leaves (I have surmised that it is either some kind of leaf spot or scab, but I am not sure).
This year we had a pretty bad drought in the middle of the summer and the leaves fell early, as did the limited amount of fruit (last year there were 1000s of pears when we had a wetter summer).
I also noticed the same thing on my new Kieffer pear (it is around 12' tall). I think the drought may have only hurt the trees.
I have a few crabs planted in and around these pears, so I do not want my newer plantings to be affected by a disease or fungus from the older, weaker trees (they are all DR trees, but still).
Is there a product I can use on the larger trees that is not a spray, as spraying these trees is out of the question due to their height?
I am looking for something like a soil drench that anyone may have experience with? Thanks in advance!
I intend to fertilize the trees this spring.
Hey there , did you solve your issue. I.e. spraying a larger older tree.
Thx
 
Any old tree that started having issues is a great candidate for pruning/limbing. I would get in there and get a lot of that old growth cut away. Let it put on some young healthy growth.
 
I never did end up spraying. Put some fertilizer and wood ash around the bases of the trees to see if it would help. It didn’t really so I’m gonna cut down the worst three (including a callery near one of the worst ones that got fireblight) then trim the others way back and maybe even try to top work some.
 
fireblight is a bacteria. Copper sprays are an option. 30-40ft tall is a tall order. I have a backpack blower / sprayer. Probably can do 25ft. A lighter solution in a powerwasher with a large jet might work good.

Could use this.


Get a small plastic drum, one of those 30 gallon. Do a practice run on the tall tree with just water. bonide copper treatent says 1/2 to 2oz per gallon and 1.1 to 2.3 gallon per 1000sq ft.

These monsters are probably 30 of them per acre. 43500sqft/acre divided by 30 is about 140sq feet. Regular spray volume at max rate of 2.3 gal / 1000square feet is about 3.33 gallons of regular mix. Thats about 6.67oz of bonide per big tree. That lyoung pear probably could use about 1/2oz of bonide copper per tree.

You could buy a large 12v sprayer pump and get a long steel length of 3/8" steel fuel line from the auto parts store. Slowly squeeze the open end into a fan pattern until it sprays as tall as you need it to. Can try a smaller piece of tubing without squeezing.

I bought a larger sprayer pump to try it out. Pretty sure it was this one.


My 2 store bought pears did great in 2023. They did not do good last summer. I suspect I have to do the same thing too.

My peachs have peach leaf curl and can fix that with copper treatment as well during the dormant season.

There's more concertrated version of copper treatment than bonide. Not sure what I can get.
 
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