Maybe I can harness the power of the web here. Since Typepad does a good job of indexing posts so they show up high in the big search engines, I thought I may use this to my advantage. I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s going on with our Pluot tree. I’ve done a bunch of research but can’t come up with a good diagnosis.

The first issue is a growth or “canker” at the base of the trunk of the tree. It’s about the size of lemon and is hard to the touch. It’s light brown, which is what is throwing me off. The canker that seems to be most common in plum trees (pluot is a hybrid plum/apricot) is called Black Knot. But as the name indicates, those are usually black and the one on our Pluot tree is light brown.

Then there is an issue in the leaves. Many of the leaves have holes with yellow edges around them. From my research, I’ve learned that there is a disease called Shot Hole, that manifests in a similar manner, but with that disease there should be a dark tissue around it. The other option is that it’s Phytotoxicity or Spray Injury. This may be more likely as I have been spraying our trees to prevent Cottling Moths. I think from now on I’ll only spray the apple and pear trees. Cottling moths typically lay their eggs in apples and pears which will eventually develop into larvae, and subsequently worm holes. But since they don’t seem to affect stone fruit trees I can probably skip those.

Anyway, hopefully a fruit tree expert will stumble across my site and have some ideas. When checking my site referrers it’s amazing what kinds of searches people do that eventually lead them to my blog! In the meantime I’ll check with the local Zamzows and see what they have to say.