›

Black spots on crab apples

Soup29Soup29 Posts: 4
in Fruit & veg
This year and last there have been black spots covering all of the crab apples that grow on the tree. 
The apples are about an inch big, pictured bellow.
Does anyone know what the dark patches are and if they are still edible?
Sorry for the bad pictures lol

Posts

  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 3,131
    Apple Scab. Bit difficult to deal with, but there are fungicides which may be used on edible crops.
    The fruit is still edible (John Downie by the way). We used a lot of scabby ones to make Crab apple Jelly.
  • Soup29Soup29 Posts: 4
    Thank you! I wasn't sure since the apples are so small the whole thing is covered.
    I googled and it doesn't seem there's a way to get rid of the infection from the tree without making the apples inedible :( is this true?
  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 3,131
    Sorry not really my field of expertise since we never sprayed any of our fruit trees when in either flower or fruit.
    We sprayed in Winter with a horticultural soap  insecticide and very occasionally in early spring with a copper sulphate solution.
    What was recommended as a spray?
  • BobTheGardenerBobTheGardener Leicestershire, UKPosts: 7,918
    Scab is very, very common on all types of apple and pear trees.  I would recommend that you rake up all dead leaves after they have all fallen and either burn or put them in your black bin (not on compost heap.)  Clear a cricle around the base of the trunk of all grass and weeds, then sprinkle some blood, fish and bone (applied as per packet) and finally mulch that area with a 3" deep layer of well-rotted manure.  This will feed your tree, making it less susceptible to disease and the mulch will make it less likely that the fungal spores (which overwinter in the leaf litter on the ground) will rise-up and infect the fresh new leaves in spring.  If you also give the tree a spray with a 'fruit tree winter wash' around December as mentioned above, that will further reduce spores overwintering in cracks in the bark etc.

    A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
  • Soup29Soup29 Posts: 4
    Thank you so much!
    It's ok to eat the spots on the skin tho?
  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 3,131
    All we did was to stew the whole fruit and push the purée through a sieve to extract the juice which we then used to make jam.
    The fruit is not really edible in the sense of say a Golden Delicious or a Jonagold apple. They are rather acidic and not that sweet.
    Having said that the Scab would do you no harm if ingested.
  • Soup29Soup29 Posts: 4
    Ah I know they're so sour! I usually make them into a cake :) thanks for both ur help
Sign In or Register to comment.