Fungal disease of bush cherries

I have a couple of bush cherries from the U Sask program. Each year, a few weeks after breaking dormancy and starting to form cherries they get desperately sick and the new growth dies back, (together with all the cherries).

Three things:
1) Am I allowed to ask about cherries on a forum devoted to apples?
2) Does anybody have any idea what this is? Is it fungal?
3) I will attempt to post a picture, but I no longer know what the appropriate format is. If nothing else, clicking on whatever displays below will bring up a picture, using the groworganicapples Photobucket account which Michael Potts created a couple of years ago. (Click on the link. Hit the return arrow in your browser to go back to HON.)

Sick Cherries

Broomholm Orchard
Zone 5b in Nova Scotia



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2017 08:11PM by David Maxwell.

This forum delves into all fruiting perennials, David. No holds barred. You indeed have been part of conversations elsewhere here concerning other fruits, case in point being Bacterial Canker in Prunus Species.

Which indeed is what you are dealing with on your bush cherries. That picture you posted speaks to shoot meltdown by blight bacteria, only now the culprit is Prunus syringae bacteria.

Shall we change a fungal title in a fungal category over to Bacterial Opportunists? It would be best if you post this query anew but I can work the background magic if need be. I just saw many an afflicted bush cherry this past week over at Josh Karp's in northeast Vermont. Cool, wet springs lead to exactly this. I'm wondering if any of you are spraying holistic oomph on bush cherries from the get-go? It can be difficult to eradicate once the bacterium is in the vascular system.

Lost Nation Orchard
Zone 4b in New Hampshire

Ha! Now we have an interesting issue. I managed to get one of our local Ag consultants to opine as to the cause of this. (They aren't supposed to talk to amateurs like me, but he knows me and thre in his 2 cents. He says it is European Brown rot (Monilinia laxa), (which differs from the American version in that it spreads into the shoot vasculature almost immediately.) He cites a video from Michigan: "Dr. George Sundin from MSU made a nice video on this: [www.youtube.com] "
Interestingly, Bob Bors, the developer of these bush cherries at U Sask,, said he had no idea what it was, and had not had any problems like this.
So.. now we have an interesting challenge - does this belong in the fungal forum, or in the bacterial opportunists, and how can we find out?
In answer to your question as to whether I sprayed holistic oomph, I confess that I did not. I did spray copper at bud break, but this had no apparent effect.

Broomholm Orchard
Zone 5b in Nova Scotia

Good one, David. Molina is fungal, and the Euro version isn't something I have seen. But what I saw in Vermont this past week really fits the bill for Pseudomonas, and this has been widely reported on bush cherries. Todd confirms the same in his original post about this. Growers in the Pacific Northwest, on the wet side of the Cascades, have declared that bush cherries are a no go there because of the bacterial thrust. What I like in all this is that priming plant immune function and boosting biological reinforcement are the holistic approaches appropriate for either disease.

We'll keep this thread fungal as a good way of showing others confusion reigns!

Lost Nation Orchard
Zone 4b in New Hampshire

haven't had time to really dig in to this.
could be psuedomonas but also wondering if it could be 'verticillium wilt' , a soil borne fungus.

identical symptoms to David & same cultivars from Canada.

check this link out:
[extension.wsu.edu]