cedar apple rust

Lovely, isn't it?

We planted a 5-gallon Jonathan apple tree on our property on Mother's Day about five years ago. It grew the first year but has NOT grown one bit since then. We have a windbreak of Eastern Redcedar trees surrounding our property. These trees are covered with cedar apple rust galls, which don't hurt the cedar trees, but when it rains in the spring, these lovely gelatinous telial horns protrude from the galls. They produce spores which germinate on apple leaves, causing the apple leaves to become spotted, turn yellow, and prematurely fall off. No leaves. No growth.

Apparently there are some varieties (William's Pride, Redfree, Priscilla, Liberty, and Freedom) that are very resistant to this disease while others, including our Jonathan, are susceptible to it. Perhaps I'll give one of the resistant varieties a try before giving up.



We knew that we had a problem with cedar apple rust when we planted a trio of flowering crabapple trees two years ago, so we looked for resistant varieties and they have done beautifully. We got two Donald Wyman, shown here with it's pink buds, ready to break out into beautiful white blossoms and a Prairie Fire, which is beautiful year round with cherry colored bark in winter, dark pink flowers in spring, purplish-green leaves all summer, and dark red berries in the fall.

I also really want to plant some pear trees. I've read that some varieties well suited to Nebraska are Moonglow, Luscious, Harrow Sweet, Magness, and Seckel. As much as I want to plant a small orchard this spring, I'm going to make sure I do my research so that we don't waste our money or time on the wrong varieties.