A couple of months ago, Aaron noticed some globs of weirdness on some of the Cedar trees in our wood line. The bronze-colored dusty knots, it turns out, are the first signs of cedar-apple rust.
Cedar-apple rust is a disease that requires two hosts to complete its lifecycle – in our case, the cedar, apple and crabapple trees. An alternative version – Cedar-hawthorn rust can affect pear trees too – so it’s equally likely that that’s what we’re seeing.
Now that things are progressing and the orchard is starting to bear fruit, we’re noticing lots of rusty leaves. We panicked for a minute – not going to lie. But in doing some research, it sounds like all is pretty harmless.
Generally, things just look weird and sometimes gross. That’s it. Twigs can get a little gnarly. Leaves can fall a little early. But from what we’re reading – we’re still going to have plenty of delicious apples. The trees themselves just may not be 100% Instagram ready. Oh, drat.
If anything – we’ll likely aim to plant resistant apple varietals as we expand the orchard in the future. According to Missouri Botanicals, those include Redfree, Liberty, William’s Pride and Freedom.