Truly. I feel terrible when I have to spray even every seven days because of heavy rains washing everything off. Of course on the cover sprays I look forward to spreading that interval out significantly, when the sun generally comes out more,and rain is less.
I can’t say I won’t spray tighter than every seven days (at the tightest) but so far I’ve not done so. I’ve hardly lost any peaches to worms, but I’ll admit I’ve come across a few worms every now and again.
Sometimes if I see some peaches with some “sap spots” I don’t pick them, and let them drop, for fear there could be a worm (even thought it’s probably insect piercing) I’m sure you recognize Blue that if you sell a peach which has a worm, you’ve lost a customer for life (and probably all their friends). So, as so many backyard growers point out, we commercials have a higher standard, which forces our hand, unless we try to go organic, which involves more salesmanship in my area than I want. SWD causes more harvest losses here, even in peaches.
I didn’t realize there were still commercial organic apple growers in the SE. I had dialoged with a SE grower several years ago and he said several growers had banded together to try it, but at that time that had all abandoned it except one.
Pears, apples, and other susceptibles bloom and set fruit several times per year in my location. I spray as directed by the Agrimycin 17 Label.
There are many “Caution” rated pesticides which are classified as Restricted Use in California. For these I need both a site permit and an applicator’s permit, plus file a report for each use of any Restricted Use pesticide.
As someone who recently moved from southern PA to an island off the coast of Maine, I can attest to two strong points raised in this forum:
Your location is everything (no spray apples for the north and west only)
In PA, a no spray program was literally fruitless. From diseases to insect pressure, there were just too many adversaries in the picture to get anything reasonable from an apple tree. In that area, it was far easier to get no spray crops from other fruits like Asian pears, persimmon, paw paw, etc. In coastal Maine, no spray apples are totally achievable, given the proper expectations. Heck, there are more than 50 totally untended apple trees spread around the island I live on and all of them produce plenty of good apples. There is a catch though …
Expectations are everything
Even here in coastal Maine where the pest pressure is low enough to support no spray apples, there are still plenty of coddling moth and diseases around. As long as you are willing to accept ugly fruits and the occasional worm you didn’t spot at first inspection, then you can be pleased with no spray results. You do less work to protect, you get fewer good apples. In places like PA, less means none. In places like coastal Maine, less means still plenty.
My apples are barely in the ground so I don’t have a good sense of what my specific pests and issues will be, but I want to try bagging whole trees at some point.
I haven’t found much in the way of first hand accounts of people taking this approach but I like the idea of being able to wait until the bees have done their thing and then just bagging the whole tree.
I am only chiming in here to mention some apples are way more favored and others are less (hardly rare knowledge, I know), but in particular I noticed for example there is a dog park near here, and it is full of apple trees. 2 caught my eye, one was a pink-flesh crab my wife, who isn’t a fan of apples, liked because "it didn’t taste like an apple)…it was tart and to me cranberry-ish, so I am stealing scions for a one-day pink cider tree (maybe; a boy can dream)…
that long preamble aside, there was another tree loaded with yellow fruit in November, many with red freckles but they were ridiculously sound compared to their neighbors–there must have been dozens of trees within a quarter mile or less of this tree that had misshapen, gnarled apples from various hits that messed the fruit up, and this tree appeared to have a good 70% apples that were at least mostly useable. I was admittedly in a hurry that day, so I didn’t get the chance to look the tree over completely and thoroughly, and took 2 apples to taste, but they were both clean and sweet, and not terribly complex but pretty good in the “golden delicious” realm…I will be taking scions to evaluate that tree further as well, because it looked to be a nice candidate (in S Wisconsin, at least) for low- or no-spray, and was actually pretty tasty too…
Oz, @galinas posted the pictures of her tree covered on this forum.
The thread titled Dwarf Sour Cherry whole Tree Cover, (or something like that.). You can look it up.
I am curious to know what sort of bag you are using. I am in Australia and there some bag suppliers here and they are quite expensive if you are looking at using hundreds. Are you able to post a pic?
Looks like a promising first try. I wonder how that fabric compares to the stuff in the link I posted. It seems like if the basic approach is sound some enterprising person could create slightly different designs for different purposes.
The ideal weave would be tight enough to consistently block the targeted pest but otherwise as loose as possible to allow maximum airflow, sunlight, etc.
Obviously this would be a significantly more expensive approach to take, but then people build greenhouses so is this really more extreme than that? You would need to have an approach that would allow you to open it up for pollinators.
This may seem silly but I’ve always wondered about the following: Ignoring the economics, let’s say I have a dwarf Bing cherry tree in the great lakes or mid-atlantic region. Normally, cracking, rot, etc… would be so bad that it is not worth growing. If I had a 5’ diameter weather proof fan hooked up to solar batteries and blowing fairly hard all summer (without damaging the leaves or knocking off the fruit), would this help with disease issues caused by humidity?
Scott if I’m not mistaken cherries also crack due to water intake thru the skin of the fruit. Some treatments designed to reduce cracking are aimed at reducing water intake thru the skin. A day of mist and drizzle can cause cracking.
I’m going by what I’ve read in Good Fruit Grower not first hand experience.
Oops yes I’ve read the same articles. I get my cracking when its dry and then I get a big rain so its directly correlated with a sudden change in soil wetness but thats not the cause and effect.
Yes, but cracking has even been a problem for cherries in the humid regions under tunnels- the excess water delivered by tree roots extending outside the tunnels is enough to cause cracking, apparently.
