Hi Scott,
Nice draft of a fruit tree program. I am a licensed crop advisor and product development professional working for Phyllom BioProducts. I would also like to suggest that if an orchardist has a problem with leaf rollers then Bt kustaki products such as Thuricide, Deliver and or Dipel and other brands of BT kurstaki are a good choice. These BT strains also have some activity against codling moth although perhaps less than the granulosis virus products that you mention. As for Japanese beetle adults, beetleGONE! tlc BT galleriae is perhaps the only organic microbial with activity against the adults. It must be ingested on treated foliage. beetleGONE! may be tank mixed with Surround. Milky spore is only for grubs and the label indicates it is not effective in the year of treatment.
One caution re. spinosad. Petal fall is good timing but perhaps with an evening application as the label indicates toxicity to foraging bees.
Hi Kurt, I use Dipel myself. I debated putting it in but I have not seen as strong a results with it compared to the virus approaches. I will at least put a mention of it, it is not harmful to beneficials at all so you can’t go wrong with it.
I thought that Beetle Gone stuff was super expensive, but I did hear it works well.
Thanks for the point about spinosad and bees, thats important.
Gardens Alive has a pretty bad rap with consumers these days – see e.g. http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/146/#b . They have been doing some innovative stuff, too bad their customer service is not better.
Sure will add. I am no neem expert but many of the formulations out there only contain some of the active compounds.
… OK added a couple. I used neemresource with success in the past. Dyna-Grow is sold as a leaf shiner but I have heard of many people having good luck with it for other uses.
Serenade is not oil, get e.g. Monterey oil. Whether to use copper,sulphur, or lime-sulphur depends on the disease issues and type of trees. For dormant spray I would use lime-sulphur as a start until something needing copper comes along. For regular summer disease sprays use sulphur or Serenade/oil combo. To start with you probably can use only one of those two all the time, only when you are having real disease issues would I consider alternating. Also until the trees are fruiting you don’t need to spray for bugs at all, unless you get aphids or pear psylla.
Relating to regular summer disease control, why did you leave out copper or lime-sulphur as a recommendation? I know you said that copper can have harmful affects on the soil. Which fungicide will give me the greatest coverage of diseases? Copper?
Copper can damage leaves and fruit so it is generally not used during the season on most fruits (grapes are one exception). Lime-sulphur can be used in place of sulphur. I usually just use sulphur as I don’t have much lime-sulphur so I want to save it for dormant spraying as it is hard to find these days.
Cuevo is a commercial form of copper engineered for spray on green foliage. I use it as a dormant spray to control peach leaf curl, for which it is reasonably effective although I wonder if Kocide might be better. I use it on tomatoes and apricots right into summer.
I believe Drew said there is a similar formula packaged for home owners.
Alan, Cuevo looks like its copper octanoate aka copper soap. The concentration of copper is much less in the copper soap products and so most plants are OK with that level in the growing season. I don’t think its as effective for dormant or delayed dormant use, but I don’t have any facts to back that up other than the lower % copper. Natural Guard copper soap and Bonide liquid copper are homeowner brands of copper octonate.
Its probably a good low-impact spray to use in some cases, but I haven’t used it much myself so don’t know what it might work well on.
Yes, you are correct but the label calls for about a third cup per gallon of water. At 10% copper, how does that compare the the recommended concentration of Kocide. Seems like a lot of copper I’m putting down- I thought it was the form more than the concentration that makes it ok on foliage.
The label claims it controls brown rot on stone fruit. Heard anything about that?
If you look a bit lower on the label you will see its only 1.8% metallic copper equivalent - the soap is most of the weight. Kocide is 30% or so metallic copper equivalent. But, you are using a lot more per gallon it sounds like, so it sounds like in the end they are roughly similar overall amounts of copper.
None of the standard brown rot studies I have seen include copper octanoate so I have no info on using it for brown rot. Copper alone does not do very well though in these studies, sulphur is better. In theory there could be something in the soap formulation that makes it better for brown rot.
The phytotoxicity issue I am also unclear on. Reading the Kocide and Cuevo labels, neither recommends spraying for brown rot after petal fall, and its only brown rot blossom blight mentioned. But the language on the Kocide label directly mentions phytotoxicity and the Cuevo label does not. Note that Kocide is also labeled for brown rot blossom blight just as Cuevo is.
Yeah, I didn’t follow the label to the actual treatment for brown rot. Sounds like the same deal as myclobutanil, which supposedly does a bang up job on blossom blight. Ever seen blossom blight? In my orchard I don’t spray for it.
I rarely get blossom blight but fairly often on apricots I get the tip shoot version. But its such a small amount its not worth bothering to spray. Obviously some conditions make it bad or nobody would be spraying for it.
I will probably go with copper and spray soon as our established apple tree did have a number of fireblight strikes last year and I’d like to to protect my young trees. But I may order the lime-sulfur along with Surround from 7springs for the future if this is the right stuff.
Just so I am clear. . .the copper & oil are tank mixed? Is that true with the lime-sulfur? Labelling on the stuff above indicated that was ok except for grapes.
