How did heirloom tree growers successfully grow their non-disease resistant trees? Questions on Fire

How did heirloom tree growers successfully grow their non-disease resistant trees? Questions on Fireblight and Thomas JeffersonTumblr, it is the season to think about fruit trees again and I am stumped on a few issues. I live in Fireblight territory. Fireblight (caused by Erwinia amylovora) is a terrible disease endemic to North America (and quickly spreading around the world) that can do lethal damage to an orchard filled with apples, pears, hawthorns, and related species. First experience was in our community garden in Atlanta, where it killed several supposedly-disease-resistant pear trees. Part of what makes fireblight so scary is not just how lethal it is, but how fast it is. You have to be paying very close attention to your trees, and you just start chopping off the diseased parts as soon as you see them. If you’re fast enough, you’ll save the tree. If you aren’t, you better remove it before it spreads to the others. In that top photo, they need to chop that diseased/dead stuff off STAT.Fireblight is actually a bacterial disease, so… guess what is used to help manage it? Oh yes antibiotics, the same kind of antibiotics you and I take when we get sick. Aside from acquiring modern plants that have been bred to be resistant to it, the two main forms of preventative treatment is copper spray (which is rough… copper can be just as harsh on trees as whatever disease you’re trying to prevent) and streptomycin. No one ever talks about whether spraying orchards with antibiotics might have something to do with antibiotics becoming less effective.Anyway, what I can’t figure out is how early fruit tree growers in this area handled fireblight. They didn’t have copper, they they didn’t have antibiotics, they didn’t have the fancy biopesticides that are relatively new to the market. Thomas Jefferson grew all of these incredible cider apples at Monticello, and I’m just stumped. Monticello is in Virginia and Virginia is definitely in fireblight territory. How did he do it? How did he manage to grow all these heirloom apples to the point that he had plenty for making cider and pies?V pointed out that honeybees are great disease vectors, and they can easily spread fireblight from one orchard to the next. Perhaps Jefferson relied on native bees and not honeybees? Perhaps something that doesn’t fly as far?I found this from TJs notes, and it points to the mad observation skills of the indigenous folks:“The honey-bee is not a native of our continent. Marcgrave indeed mentions a species of honey-bee in Brasil.3 But this has no sting, and is therefore different from the one we have, which resembles perfectly that of Europe. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but, when, and by whom, we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man’s fly, and consider their approach as indicating the approach of the settlements of the whites. A question here occurs, How far northwardly have these insects been found? That they are unknown in Lapland, I infer from Scheffer’s4 information, that the Laplanders eat the pine bark, prepared in a certain way, instead of those things sweetened with sugar. “They eat this in place of things made with sugar.” Certainly, if they had honey, it would be a better substitute for sugar than any preparation of the pine bark. Kalm5 tells us the honey bee cannot live through the winter in Canada.“6According to the Monticello site, Jefferson’s overseer was a beekeeper, and there’s a sketch of where the hives were kept. So obviously he had both bees and productive fruit trees.Next I decided to see exactly what Jefferson was growing. He grew 18 different types of apples but had 4 favorites. One is thought to be extinct - Taliaferro. Next is Spitzenburg Esopus, which Cummins describes as “Dessert apple for connoisseurs, also very valuable for cider.” oh yeah and totally susceptible to fireblight! Newtown Pippin? Also “somewhat susceptible” to fireblight. The last is Hewes / Virginia Crabapple (according to multiple sources it makes an AMAZING cider), and while I haven’t been able to dig specific info on it up re: Fireblight, according to Cummins it is highly susceptible to cedar apple rust. Hm. Disease-resistant trees these are not.Finally, I tweeted the Monticello estate. They explained to me that it during the late 1700s, it was the Pear trees that really took the brunt of Fireblight. So my running theory is that since there’s different strains of Fireblights, perhaps it didn’t used to be quite so lethal or virulent. Beyond that, I really have no idea. There’s a fancy book that talks about the history of fireblight but it’s over $300! The Monticello peeps also recommended a book that is more affordable but probably doesn’t answer this nerdy question (in any case it seems like someone somewhere knows the answer).Anyone out there have any idea how fireblight and other diseases used to be managed? Just how the heck did these heirloom growers manage to grow all these non-disease resistant heirloom trees?? On the East Coast, a LOT of cider trees were grown. In the early Americas, it was cider, not beer, that was the main safe beverage mainstay. How did they do it? -- source link

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