Apple Scab
Olive green velvety patches on leaves that darken to brown or black and have a soft fringed edge, plus rough corky spots on the fruit skin. The velvety surface and the fuzzy, undefined margin separate scab from the sharp-edged spots of ordinary leaf spot, and unlike cedar-apple rust the patches are never orange.
Disease checklist
Four things to look for. If most of them match what you are holding, you are in the right place.
What gets rid of it
Gentlest option first. For most backyard cases the first one is enough, so try these in order and stop as soon as it works. If you do spray something, the product label tells you how — please read the notice further down.
1Rake up every fallen leaf
Collect and remove or compost the leaf litter in autumn, because next spring's spores are launched from last year's leaves lying under the tree.
leaf rake heavy dutyTry this first2Open the canopy
Prune out crowded interior branches in winter so the leaves dry faster after rain.
bypass loppers pruning3Protectant sprays during spring rains
Copper, sulfur or myclobutanil applied from bud break through petal fall on the schedule the label sets.
bonide sulfur plant fungicide4Plant resistant cultivars
Enterprise, Liberty, Prima and Priscilla apples, and crabapples such as Prairifire and Snowdrift, resist scab without spraying.
scab resistant apple tree5Mow the litter before bud break
Chopping the fallen leaves speeds their breakdown and lowers the number of spores released in spring.
As an Amazon Associate, Story Thyme Farms earns from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you. It never changes what we recommend.
Which plants get apple scab
Every plant we cover that gets apple scab, grouped by type — tap any one to open its page. A note beside a plant came from that plant’s own entry, because the same disease can be a minor nuisance on one plant and a serious problem on another. Plenty of plants we do not cover get it too.
trees5
Plant families hit hardest
Related plants often share the same problems, so if one plant in a family has it, check the others. The largest group here is Rosaceae, with 5 of the 7 affected plants.
- Rosaceae5 plants
When to treat
The infection window is spring rain from green tip through petal fall, so protection has to go on before or during those rains; a scabby leaf in July cannot be cured, and a dry spring means almost no scab at all.
Timing only — the label is the law
This page tells you when to watch for apple scab and when treating is worth considering. It is not a recommendation to apply any particular product. Read and follow the product label before you spray — under federal law the label is the legal instruction, and using a pesticide against it is illegal.
- Check the pre-harvest interval. Every product that’s cleared for an edible crop sets a minimum number of days between spraying and picking. Find it on the label before you spray anything you intend to eat.
- Check the re-entry interval before you or anyone else works in the treated area again, and use the protective equipment the label names.
- Confirm the product is registered for your crop in your state. This page groups many different crops together, and a product legal on one of them is not legal on all of them — state registrations differ too. Your state pesticide agency or local extension office can confirm both.
- Rates and mixing instructions come from the label, never from us. We don’t publish them because they differ by product and formulation.
Other problems on the same plants
If a plant gets apple scab, these are the problems it most often gets as well, so they are worth checking for while you are out there. They tend to appear together; one does not cause another.