How To Recognize Cranberry Diseases?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Cranberries are one of the healthiest berries on the planet. This bright beauty contains a good half of the periodic table, a huge amount of vitamins and carotene. Supporters of traditional medicine actively use not only ripe cranberries, but also its leaves. But from time to time, signs of a wide variety of diseases appear on cranberry leaves. In order to understand how to save this valuable culture from the misfortune that unexpectedly attacked it, it is important to know how all kinds of diseases manifest themselves on it

Snow mold

This ailment is caused by a whole complex of microscopic fungi. Snow mold begins to attack cranberry plantings approximately in March-April. Often at this time, the cranberries are still under the snow. And when the snow cover completely disappears, in the cranberry thickets you can see solid foci of affected plants - the buds and leaves are painted in characteristic reddish-brownish tones and are gradually covered with yellowish mushroom mycelium. Closer to summer, the leaves acquire an ash-gray color and fall off rather quickly.

If you do not start a timely fight against snow mold, then in subsequent years, the lesions become much larger, and they begin to gradually merge. The death of flower buds leads to a lack of fruiting and to the frequent death of cranberry bushes.

Phomopsis

The fungus causative agent of this scourge causes dry tops of both old and young shoots. There are no signs of wilting. The leaves are first painted in yellowish tones, and after some time they acquire a bronze or orange tint. They usually do not fall from cranberry bushes. Cranberry stalks develop dirty gray spots that turn into sores, and infected fruits and flowers are characterized by a brownish color. Phomopsis attacks cranberries especially strongly when dry and hot weather is established.

Monilial burn

The tops of young cranberry shoots suddenly begin to droop, turn brown and dry out. And in humid weather, a yellowish bloom of conidial sporulation is almost always formed on them. During the budding and flowering stage, infection often spreads from infected shoots to flower buds and tiny berry ovaries. In the case of early infection, infected flower buds dry out, and with late infection, diseased ovaries continue their growth and development, practically no different from their healthy counterparts. It is noteworthy that rot can manifest itself at completely different times: both at the stage of ripening of berries, and during harvesting or even during its storage. More precise dates will depend on weather conditions and the degree of infection. And the most critical periods of infection are considered to be the blooming of cranberry buds and the beginning of regrowth of young shoots.

Red leaf spot

Infected cranberry shoots begin to deform and gradually die off. Slightly less often, this ailment affects the pedicels, as well as buds with flowers. The leaves developing from diseased kidneys are characterized by a pinkish color and vaguely resemble tiny roses.

Pestalocia

This infection affects both stems and leaves with fruits with equal force. On cranberry stalks with leaves, dark brownish spots are first formed, which subsequently turn into grayish tones and begin to merge. All spots are framed by narrow edges of darker shades. And when the active growth of cranberry bushes begins, young shoots will begin to dry out, and almost always their drying is accompanied by falling leaves and s-shaped curvature of the stems.

Gibber spot

Affected by this misfortune, cranberry leaves begin to fall off massively and prematurely, which in turn significantly weakens the plants. In early August, small brownish-purple specks appear on the leaves, which gradually blur, become chlorotic and are covered in the center with tiny black fruit bodies. And along the edges of such spots, you can see dark rims.