treating cedar-apple rust

Can anyone advise me on how to treat cedar-apple rust? I'm seeing what looks like the rust on the leaves of my very young apple tree. I live in NM where there is plenty of juniper, though I've never seen the bright red balls of fungus on any of them. The apple leaves with the rust are turning yellow and falling off even though it is still early August. If I look online they all say to spray with chemicals which I won't do. Must be a natural way. Thanks for any help.

I've done combat with cedar apple rust. In my space it required fairly close proximity between two vulnerable species, which I foolishly planted together.

When you look at the infected leaves, do you see a fruiting body like a wart (for fungal spore dispersion) on the underside of the leaf? That's cedar apple rust. Other types of rust (there are many) don't seem to have this.

My solution was labour intensive -- pick off each infected leaf that showed early development of a "wart" and burn everything in a hot fire. And then make choices about which of the vulnerable species would also meet the fire.

Thanks Douglas, I just checked my tree and I don't see the fruiting body on any of the leaves, though almost all the leaves have at least some spots of the rust. Maybe it's not the cedar-apple rust but one of the other ones you mentioned. Can you (or anyone) let me know about the different kinds of rust and what to do about it (if I even need to do anything about it, that is. It seems that some rust does not hurt the tree or the apples. Is that true?)

Wally Jasper wrote:... (if I even need to do anything about it, that is. It seems that some rust does not hurt the tree or the apples. Is that true?)

My experience has been that some rust is going to happen, and more in some years depending on climatic vagarities (drought, endless rain, etc.). But it never really affected my trees' health or productivity, so I didn't get too fussed about it.

Ah, thanks. That helps. We've been in a prolonged drought this summer. Every week I've watered my trees, but the intense sun and dry winds probably took care of that, even with the extra mulch I added recently. As a newbie fruit tree grower I'm getting my education on the ground, so to speak. Early in summer a young peach tree got hit with aphids and I didn't notice until most leaves were crumpled and droopy. I treated with soapy (Dr Bronners) water and amazingly the tree recovered, grew new leaves and is now healthy and well. Raising trees is not as simple as I thought it would be. It's like having kids to worry about. Thanks for your help, Douglas.

With young trees, I would prefer to chop the tree out now, and plant a variety that resists rust.

I like the idea of removing the infected tree. I have juneberry and they are affected by cedar-apple rust. (really the entire malus sub-family seems to be easily affected).  Luckily the apple tree that I have 20ft away has never been affected by it.

Thanks S Bengi and Joseph for responding. The thing is, since I looked for the fungus fruiting body or wart on the leaves and didn't find any, it seems that, according to Douglas, the rust is probably or possibly not the cedar-apple rust and may be an innocuous sort that is relatively harmless and may have appeared because of the drought conditions. So I think I'll wait for awhile and see if and how this develops. If worst case scenario, I guess I'll go with the chop and fire option, although I've already gotten quite attached to my little tree. I talk to it and tell it how pretty it is and how glad I am that it's growing here. It won't be easy to take it out. Unless it is clearly dying and maybe suffering.

We live in cedar country with a lot of Juniper trees.  I never could find the tree that was infected and our fruit tree just never seemed to do well no matter what we did.

Like Joseph, we eliminated the fruit tree.  Tried a different variety and it never did well so we got out of the fruit tree business.

In our case we only had one juniper tree in close proximity and it was definitely a host.  Crabapples look like they're actually going to produce this year.  

I'm in the process of removing all the cedar trees on my 80 acres.  It's an uphill battle, but I've planted dozens of varieties of apples that are supposed to be resistant to rust and haven't had good luck.  I have one tree so far, an Arkansas Black that seems to be doing well and resisting it.

Trace, don't count on getting rid of the threat of Apple Cedar Rust as this article says it can travel two miles.

Unfortunately, this is often impractical, because the fungal spores can travel as far as two miles.

https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/cedar-apple-rust