Cherry diseases description with photos and methods of treatment
Cherry diseases description with photos and methods of treatment. Proper care of cherries includes not only watering, pruning and loosening the soil. It is also important to protect plants from diseases that can leave you without a crop. Let's figure out how to protect cherries from major ailments.
What you will learn from this article:
The list of all possible diseases of cherries is quite large. We will tell you how to recognize and overcome them.
Cherry diseases
All cherry diseases are divided by distribution:
- Fungal, forming spots, death of leaves, berries, trunks. This is the most common type of disease. They are spread by spores, carried by a dirty tool, wind.
- Bacterial - microbial infection, insect pests, wind, dirty tools.
- Viral - introduced by insects, transferred from one site to another. There are no drugs for viral diseases, they show the vascular system. Only removing a diseased tree can save a garden.
- Non-infectious - improper care, frost holes, at the wrong time and incorrectly performed pruning, sealing raw cuts with wax, breaking branches under snow or fruit load.
Prevention measures, ridding the garden of pests, and careful attention to each damaged leaf will help keep the sweet cherry healthy.
Disease clasterosporiosis, or perforated spotting, cherries
This fungal disease can affect the entire tree: its buds, flowers, branches, but leaves are most often affected. In spring, they are covered with light brown spots, which darken and increase in size over time (their diameter can be from 1 mm to 2 cm). After about a week, holes form at the site of the spots. With a strong defeat by klesterosporiosis, the leaves dry up and fall off.
Prevention of clasterosporiosis of sweet cherry
Remove and burn all dry and damaged branches and leaves in a timely manner. Dig up the soil regularly in the trunk circle.
The causative agent of the disease remains in the cracks in the bark and tissues of the shoots, so heal all wounds on the trees. First clean them well, then disinfect with a 1% solution and cover them.
In early spring (before bud break), spray the crown of trees and soil in tree trunks with nitrafen or 1%.
Treatment. Affected leaves must be collected and burned in a timely manner. Before bud break, treatment with 1% Bordeaux liquid, 1% copper sulfate, nitrafen is recommended. Re-treatment is carried out after flowering with Bordeaux liquid (in two to three weeks).
After another two weeks, spraying with Hom fungicide is desirable. In case of severe infection, another treatment is carried out in the fall, after leaf fall. Use a 3% solution of Bordeaux mixture.
Important! Before spraying cherries, you must familiarize yourself with the safety rules. The main ones: the treatment should take place in dry, calm weather, the eyes should be protected with glasses, and the mouth and nose with a mask.
Since the spores of the pathogenic fungus that causes brown spot overwinter in the fallen leaves under the tree, in the fall it is necessary to carefully remove the dry leaves and dig up the ground in the near-trunk circle.
Verticillosis disease, verticillium wilt of sweet cherry, wilt
The names of a fungal disease that manifests itself in early spring, as a rule, on young trees. If the bark on the cherry bursts, most likely it is verticillium. Flowers darken and fade, gum appears on the branches and trunk, the bark exfoliates, and tissue necrosis occurs. The younger the tree, the faster the disease progresses. The death of a plant younger than seven years old can occur in a year, older ones - in three to eight years.
How to fight? Try not to damage the roots when digging, as the fungus enters the wound from the soil and rises through the capillary vessels. In the spring, before the leaves appear, spray the crowns with cuproxate or 3% Bordeaux mixture.
And when the foliage blooms, treat with a 1% solution a few more times: after flowering, after a couple of weeks, then at the end of summer and for the last time in October, before leaf fall begins. If the infection does not give up, use stronger drugs against verticillium wilt - Polycarbacin, Fundazol, Topsin, Vectra, polychrome.
Carefully clean the cracks from which the gum flows and cover with mullein and clay mixed with 2% copper sulphate. Cover stumps from cut diseased branches with garden pitch or oil paint. Often, verticillium wilt occurs in sunny and frosty areas, so in the fall, whitewash the trunks with a solution of lime with the addition of copper sulfate.
Fungal diseases of sweet cherry and the fight against them are not limited to the above options, they also include phyllosticosis - brown spot, powdery mildew, scab, cylindrosporiosis - white rust, most of which can be dealt with with fungicides. Real mushrooms also settle on the trunk of a cherry tree - sulfur-yellow tinder fungus, false tinder fungus. To prevent their occurrence, eliminate all damage to the bark in time.
Gum disease
Non-infectious common disease. Cherries are particularly prone to this disease, as the tree is stronger than cherries or plums and grows thicker. As a result, enzymatic transformations occur in the cells and gum is formed. The disease manifests itself on trees damaged by unfavorable wintering or already affected by clasterosporiosis, moniliosis and other diseases of stone fruit crops.
Trees grown on acidic or highly moist soils, as well as after the application of high doses of fertilizers in high humidity, are especially affected.
Symptoms of gum disease: the release of gum on tree trunks, which hardens in the form of transparent glassy formations.
Control measures. It is necessary to follow all the rules of agricultural technology and cultivation of sweet cherries (increase winter hardiness and resistance to fungal diseases, fertilize trees in a timely and correct manner, monitor the water regime).
Wounds formed on the bark after pruning or for other reasons must be covered with garden pitch (petrolatum).
Wounds that secrete gum are cleaned, disinfected with a 1% solution of copper sulfate, then rubbed with fresh sorrel leaves 2-3 times with an interval of 10-15 minutes. After all, they cover it with garden pitch or nigrol putty (70% nigrol + 30% sifted oven ash).
Cherry scab disease
The leaves are covered with brownish-brown spots and infected among them curl up into a tube. Over time, they dry out and crumble. Greens stop growing and start to dry.
Control measures. In the early periods of spring and autumn, in order to eliminate this disease, it is necessary to dig up the ground along with the foliage; get rid of sleeping fruits, leaves. You should also spray the plants, firstly, when the green buds stand out, secondly, the plants have faded and, thirdly, when the fruits have already been harvested. Spray with copper oxychloride (40 g / 10 l.) or 1% Bordeaux liquid.
Disease gommoz cherries
A non-infectious disease of the cherry tree, which is manifested by the abundant formation of gum in the cracks of the bark without visible necrosis and the formation of ulcers. The release of gum during gommosis is a reaction of tissues to the effects of various adverse factors, such as increased acidity and waterlogging of soils, excessive doses of fertilizers, incompatibility of the scion with the stock, low temperature, low or too high humidity.
Mechanical damage to the bark and the spread of infectious diseases, many of whose pathogens produce toxins, play an important role in the development of the cherry tree disease. Biochemical processes in tissues are disturbed, the growth and development of young shoots is suspended. Gum is a product of the breakdown of cell membranes, it flows to the surface in the form of a sweetish solidifying liquid. Abundant gum flow causes drying of young shoots and even entire trees.
Control measures. Compliance with all agrotechnical requirements for growing this crop, prevention of mechanical damage, frost cracks and protection from sun-frost burns. Disinfection of saw cuts with a 1% solution of copper sulphate with obligatory putty with oil paint. Liming of acidic soils. Preventive spraying of trees annually in the spring, before the leaves bloom, with copper-containing preparations against a complex of pathogenic microorganisms.
Cherry chlorosis disease
With this sweet cherry disease, a uniform yellowing of the leaves between the veins occurs, which is associated with a large deficiency in the supply of nutrients to young growing leaves.
The cause of this cherry leaf disease can be frost and bark death or the spread of root and stem rot, as well as necrosis. With a strong manifestation of the cherry disease in the spring and later in the summer, browning and drying of the leaves, and the death of branches and trunks are observed.
Control measures. Timely identification of the causes of chlorosis. Preventive spraying of trees in the spring, before the leaves bloom, with a 1% Bordeaux mixture or its substitutes (HOM, Abiga-Peak).
In case of mechanical damage and frost cracks, pruning, cutting down the fruiting bodies of tinder fungi, it is recommended to disinfect all saw cuts and cracks with a 1% solution of copper sulphate and cover with oil paint.
Disease moniliosis or gray rot of cherries
Characterized by darkening on the shoots, similar to burns. The fruits are covered with gray growths, they can rot. Its difference is in the random arrangement of plaque, in contrast, for example, from fruit rot, where a similar plaque is located in circles of the correct shape.
To overcome the disease, the affected branches are removed with fruits. The garden is treated with Bordeaux liquid or blue vitriol.
Preventive whitewashing of trunks, treatment of ants and caterpillars are carried out annually.
Berries from such a tree are not suitable for eating.
Cherry white rust disease
A disease of fungal origin. It is characterized by falling greenery in the middle of summer. After infection, the plant becomes weakened, losing its frost resistance. With a high degree of probability, in the spring it will need to be uprooted.
If you notice that in the summer for no reason a tree sheds leaves, then it must be urgently collected, taken out of the garden, it is better to burn it. Drying shoots cut off. Prepare a mixture of Bordeaux liquid with water, lubricate the sections and spray the crown.
At the initial stage, the disease can be stopped. When the moment is lost, most likely, all attempts will fail.
Cherry pests and their control
- Cherry fly. This is the most common and dangerous pest for cherries. The cherry fly lays its eggs in the still unripe fruit, where the larvae then eats away the pulp. Fight the cherry fly with insecticides.
- Cherry shoot moth. This insect destroys the buds, leaves and flowers of the cherry. The mole is destroyed at the stage of swelling of the kidneys with the help of the preparations "Holon", "Chlorophos", "Karbofos".
- Cherry sawfly. This insect makes whole spider web nests on the tree. Sawfly larvae eat the pulp of the berries. Treatment is carried out with the same drugs as in the fight against shoot moths.
It is noteworthy that sweet cherries are subject to the same diseases and pests as cherries and plums. Therefore, having studied the methods of struggle using the example of sweet cherries, you can take care of a rich and fruitful garden.
