By late July, Minnesota gardens are heavy with ripening fruit. Wet, humid weather has created ideal conditions for fungal and bacterial diseases, and alert growers know it’s time to scout, clean up, and protect the harvest.

From backyard raspberries to small orchards of apples, pears, plums and grapes, problems are multiplying under leafy canopies.

Let’s start in the apple orchard.

Apple scab is a regular late-summer visitor, leaving olive blotches on leaves and dark spots on fruit. If ignored, it can cause early leaf drop and cracked, unsightly apples.

Fire blight , more dramatic and often more damaging, scorches apple and pear shoots, leaving them looking burned. Though bacterial in nature, moisture helps it spread, especially in trees that were wounded earlier in the season.

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