Advertising frustration

[Underwor]

This photo is an ad from a local paper that was run 3 times during the recent home and garden show. It is proclaiming a fire blight epidemic. One of the photos, the smaller one, does show fire blight damage. The other of a tree completely dead with the leaves hanging on is unlike any fire blight affected tree that I have ever seen. Usually they have some branch die back, but rarely does the whole tree die in the same year, with brown leaves, at least in my experience. If it did should there not be some of the blackened, "burnt" leaves hanging on it? When the whole tree goes out of condition at once, I would expect to find an environmental problem or a root problem. Does this sound reasonable to you folks. Also, the first tree on his list to treat, Bradford Pear, according to Lyons and Sinclair in their reference "is seldom affected and then only has minor damage."

Thanks for listening to this rant. I just find it frustrating when I see ads that are designed to make people worry, rather than inform, to sell something. This is why I am trying to establish a PHC consulting business that will make give a diagnosis with recommendations for treatment, but not do the sales or work myself. Hopefully this will be a model for a true PHC system which puts diagnosis ahead of prescription and charges a fee, so that there is no need to find a problem just to cover the "free estimate."

I found these links while doing my research and thought they were interesting. I have not tried the program, but just might to see what it is about.

http://www.caf.wvu.edu/Kearneysville/Maryblyt/index.html
http://www.caf.wvu.edu/Kearneysville/maryblytfaq.html

 

[FJR]

That is interesting Bob. We had big fire blight problems in our area last year. I wonder if the first picture did have a severe fire blight, and maybe the tree had been dead for quite some time to get those crispy leaves? We removed a handful of Pear trees because of fire blight, but none of them had a canopy that was 100% impacted. It was more like 70-80% of the canopy was impacted.

Thanks for sharing the article.