People in the west coast can get away with mostly organic and/or much milder chemicals to combat pests and diseases.
It is much harder in the east coast, if not impossible.
My thinking is this, if @scottfsmith has difficulty controlling brown rot organically in MD, I don’t have a chance to do it organically. I have grown fruit trees organically and with minimal spray for my first 5-6 years. It was a losing battle.
I’m planning to spray the infuse soon, I just wasn’t sure if it would be helpful to spray anything else in addition to the Infuse (either in the same tank or in sequence), since I might only have enough time to get one infuse spray done before harvest.
Usually by the time you spray for brown rot, you will need to spray pesticide, too.
People have different opinions and preferences of chemicals they use. I use the new Sevin with zeta-cypermethrin as ingredient, not cabaryl. You can mix them in the same tank.
Use sticker/spreader like Bonide Turbo helps chemical sticks to plants surface longer.
Here are my notes from May 15, 2018 when I applied the spray and started seeing injury the following day: “Temperature in the seventies and it has been raining for the past two days and rain is forcasted for the next 10 days with temperatures ranging in the 60’s-80’s, so I prophylactically sprayed all fruit trees with a mixture of Cu Octanoate (2 Tbsp/gal), propioconazole, Bonide Tree mix (Sevin, Malathion & Captan) and Nufilm. Main targets for spray are Bacterial Spot, Brown Rot and OFM. N.B. No symptoms for any of these pests have been observed so far.”
Captan was there unintentionally, I needed the insecticide that was premixed with it. Infuse was the main fungicide that I added for Brown Rot. Copper was in the mix, and could have contributed to the apricot fruit injury. The main reason I attributed it to Captan are cautionary statements from the University of California about spraying captan on apricot fruits, see the link below:
https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/apricot/general-properties-of-fungicides/
At that link you can find the following statement: “ Caution: Never apply sulfur to apricot trees or captan to apricot fruit.”
I picked the single Summer Delight fruit on my tree last year on Sep 15, and it was slightly under ripe. So for you, I would expect the fruits to ripen some time in the first half of September.
Ahmad-
Thank you for sharing your experiences.
For future reference I would suggest you investigate a KNF ( Korean Natural Farming ) practitioner in your area and obtain a JADAM remedy JWA + JS that will deal to Blackspot completely. It is an organic preparation that can be sprayed on your trees as a preventative, or if infected, a stronger solution will stop any further infestation. It is safe to use and fruit can be eaten immediately with no witholding time.
Regrettably I am not in your area otherwise you could have had a litre at no cost to you. It is very cheap to make.
How has Sevin with zeta-cypermethrin worked for you? Have you used Permethrin previously if so how does it compare?
Zeta cypermethrin has worked well. I have never used permethrin. I used to use Spectracide Once and Done (gamma cyhalothrin) but it was not effective.
I’m not sure about that, but my guess is that’s it’s probably OK to mix. Some compounds are both bactericides and fungicides, but some are either or. For example something like oxytetracycline will treat bacterial spot, but has no effect on fungal pathogens.
My gut feeling is that group 3 DMI fungicides will have no effect on bacteria. I say this because humans use group 3 azole fungicides for various fungal infections, and to my knowledge they have no affect on bacterial pathogens.
But I couldn’t find any research from a quick internet search, so combine the two at your own risk.
I’ve little experience with biopesticides, but some dish soap contains anti-bacterials. At one time I used some recommended home concoctions (when I had a backyard orchard only). I recall one concoction burned the leaves.
If you want something additional for brown rot for apricots, you could consider Elevate. It’s expensive per acre, so I haven’t used it much. But it’s fairly cheap for a 2 lb package, something a little over $110 currently from Keystone. The rate is 1.5 lbs. per acre so it’s too expensive to spray on multiple acres. But for a home orchard, it’s probably a good option. Scott Smith has mentioned he has used it on his home orchard.
You could also consider Topsin-M. It’s cheap and effective, assuming the strain of M. fructicola you have is not resistant to it. I would not use Topsin by itself, even in a home orchard, Normally home orchards don’t have to worry about developing resistance issues, but apparently it is very easy for fungal pathogens to develop resistance to this compound. That’s why I would recommend tank mixing Topsin with a different class of fungicide (like your propiconazole).
Copper is fairly phytotoxic to most foliage, except at very low rates, so I wouldn’t use that. I’ve not used neem oil, so I don’t know about that. Oil by nature can be phytotoxic to foliage, so I would use caution, unless the label says it’s OK.
You can. We spray for scab anyway, which also gives us some early knock down of M. Fructicola. Most of the time, if you are just spraying for brown rot, you spray closer to harvest. The caveat is that since you are having such big issues w/ brown rot on your apricots, you may want to try to get ahead of the disease on your peaches/plums which may indicate some early sprays for it. I suppose if yours was my home orchard, I would probably spray the peaches/plums along with the apricots.
!
I did not expect that, given how big the apriums already are. For example, my saturn peaches are maybe dime-nickel sized, and they’ll ripen sometime mid-july to early-august here. I had assumed that the apriums would be much earlier since they are so much bigger.
I keep hearing about the JDAM, does it really work or another hype like EM1 (effective microbes) by Terraginx.
It’s maturity date in CA Central Valley is July 25-Aug 5, Philadelphia has to be at least 2-3 weeks later. When I lived in Wilmington, DE, fruits used to ripen for me about one month later than Dave Wilson’s maturity dates.
Call it a hype if you like, but you will never know the effects until you try it. Being an organic grower I never use fertilisers or ‘cides’. I ‘did’ have the occasional problems with outbursts of pests and diseases due to the weather, but these were infrequent, - and a nuisance more than anything. If you investigate JADAM and can dispense with his philosophy and concentrate on the remedies, I believe you are in for a pleasant surprise.
CAVEAT. Keep strictly to the formulation and application rates. To diverge is to invite failure.
I understand, I have never tried it - but I use all biological means to tend my veggie garden (compost, microbe based sprays and drench etc.) I tried to use EM1 and Bokashi but didn’t see any results, finally I found (Oregon Department of agriculture has the done testings see link below and look for microbial tests) that these products contained next to nothing microbials as they claimed.
https://www.oregon.gov/oda/programs/pesticides/fertilizers/pages/reportspublicationsforms.aspx
I would agree entirely with that report. One of many to have come to the same conclusion. A reason I took the risk of Jadam solutions. Works very well and saved me a bundle. ACTIVE microrganisms that you can track under the microscope to prove its validity.
Can you recommend a small experiment that I can do with JDAM, I am about to kick-off my summer vegetables and can test this without having to go full scale.
sure. email art@body.org.nz
Trying to figure out what to buy this year. Unearthed the two quotes below and likely going with captan +something (or maybe more than one something).
Most of what I’ve read has said you should mix a protectant (Captan) with a Group 3 (propiconazole, indar). And that does seem to be the least expensive but max 5 sprays for prop. according to what I’ve found. So quote 1 makes sense.
I found tebuconazole with brand name Toledo 45WP and it seems very inexpensive. (also group 3, also cannot be used too much - if used at lower rate maybe 6 sprays). So maybe that.
Has anyone tried Topsin-M + Captan? Topsin-M suffers from the “only large quantities” problem in that it comes in 1lb dissolving packets but my calculations show I’d only need .5lb per spray. However, it is listed for peaches, apples and pears (which is one of the things that @alan pointed out which is important to me since I have multiple tree types). And it seems less expensive but has good ratings for brown rot when mixed with captan… and it’s not a group 3.
I considered Topsin-M at one time but I needed to buy large quantities for a small orchard of dwarf trees. Plus it appears apple scab has now quite a bit of resistance to Topsin-M and I wanted a fungicide mix that would work for both apples and stone fruits. I don’t think many backyard growers are using Topsin-M… I think it is mainly used commercially.
The limit of 5 or 6 sprays a year isn’t going to be a problem for a typical hobbyist. I spray apples three times a year and stone fruits five or less. I usually mix Captan with Indar. But you can use Captan alone and it’s pretty effective which allows you to do more spraying if you want to even if you have maxed out the number of sprays for Indar. If you spray Indar or others in the same class you always want to use the maximum rate. If you use less than the maximum rate you increase the risk of creating resistance.