Our mini-orchard of cordoned apples and pears is springing back to life. But there’s a bit of a problem in one of the pear trees. Some of the leaves are mottled with light-coloured blotches which are starting to turn brown on the underside of the leaf. We’ve identified this as Pear leaf blister mite, caused by a microscopic beastie which invades the leaves.

Luckily, the advice is that this invasion is less serious than it looks – phew! There are no chemical controls: if a few leaves are affected, they should be removed, but otherwise, the tree should just keep going and the mite should not affect fruiting.

As much of the tree appears healthy, we’ll start by removing the worst affected leaves and giving the tree a good foliar-feed spray.

The trees were winter-pruned back in February when Bryn visited from Brighton Permaculture Trust: photos below.