To spray or not to spray

First off - I am not a horticultural farmer. Just wheat, corn, beans, hay, oats, barley. No fruits - I just see the "fruit" of my labour.
We have two apples trees in our backyard that I would like to "save" but we are considering replacing them with maples. Tent caterpillars and some sort of scab or rot are the issue. The caterpillars I can deal with (trim or burn) but the rotten scabs are killing me.
Two regulatory issues are bugging me: the need to save historic seeds or Species at Risk, and the Cosmetic Pesticide Ban. Since I do not "sell" the apples... you know the rest.
The variety of apple - the original Macintosh. Beautiful apple but highly susceptible to scab.
Hort people - what are my options? Cut or make another attempt next year?
Thanks for any input.
Wayne

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Permalink Reply by Peter Gredig on September 7, 2009 at 1:38am

Hey Wayne - scab is a tough one when you only have a few trees and no orchard sprayer. The best advice I can give is to prune aggressively to get as much air as possible moving through the tree. It's just like white mold in soys - air is the best medicine. You can use a backpack sprayer with some fungicide like Polyram a few times a year to keep scab under control, but it's tough to get rid of it completely. This was probably the perfect year for scab - wet fall last year and ongoing wet this year, so I wouldn't give up yet.

Peter

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Permalink Reply by Wayne Black on September 7, 2009 at 4:54am

Peter,
I aggressively pruned last week and my wife says it looks like a bad hair cut so there is more trimming required. My thought was more sunlight to the centre of the tree would be good.
The other advice I have read is to clean clean clean under the trees. Rotten apples, branches, leaves, everything related to the tree. Just finished doing that and picked all the apples off the tree - then cut the grass short. I will still have to clean up the leaves later this fall.
Give it one more year and see what happens I guess. Thanks for the advice.

Wayne

Peter Gredig said:

The best advice I can give is to prune aggressively to get as much air as possible moving through the tree. It's just like white mold in soys - air is the best medicine.
Peter

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