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[nafex] drought-stricken apple tree



I have three apple trees (two crabs and a jonathan) and last summer's
drought was hard on them.  It didn't occur to me that a mature crab
apple needed supplemental water, and the one that didn't get any runoff
from the garden lost all its leaves early, and the apples withered on
the limbs.

This spring, only a few of the branches have leafed out.  (It's a clump
of many branches coming from a cluster in the ground, not a single-trunk
affair.)  The healthy crabs in the neighborhood are just past full
bloom.  I have tried cutting open the bark of two of the apparently
lifeless branches, and both showed green, although neither was full of
sap.

It's possible that my earlier grafting experiments hurt the tree.  Every
grafted branch  is leafless (so are most of the others) so either
mechanical damage or some virus is a possibility.  The other crabapple
is doing fine.  It also bears several grafts, but I was careful to use
different scions on the two trees, and avoid any cross-contamination, so
if I had one or two sick scions, they could easily have infected only
one tree.

Any advice?  Should I cut off the leafless branches?  Wait a year and
see what happens?  

Thanks,
Ginda Fisher
eastern Mass., zone 6

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