Apple Scab Prevention
Hello, last year I bought a farm in eastern Canada and inherited a young apple orchard with it! I have some experience in the orchard but never have been fully responsible for one myself. Last year I decided to watch the orchard to see how things went throughout the season, hoping for little intervention with spraying. I did cover the basics of soil testing, pruning and fertilizing.
I got a great fruit set on all my trees in early spring! Things were looking great through bloom, suddenly after fruit set all my fruit fell off. I mean everything. This wasn’t an issue with pollination or with having too many fruit. It was obvious to me there was a fungal issue but I wasn’t quite sure what it was!
Fast forward to now, I’ve done research and come to the conclusion that I have a bad scab issue that caused a complete crop failure last year. Now I am researching the figure out the best preventative for scab but I’m also looking for a product that can be used as a general fungicide. I’m also looking to spray a general pesticide mainly to prevent tarnished plant bug and aphids. Basically I’m trying to spray as little as possible but as much as necessary. My main target is scab but I’d like a product to cover all my basis. Same goes for a pesticide. Can someone recommend products to me? Also can someone confirm that what I’m seeing is actually scab?
