Up here in NYS Amelanchier does great without spray as do chestnuts. Of course, the pests come from all over the world now at ever increasing speed. Certainly there is no hard rule that native fruit will always do better with less pesticide input than imported species and varieties, but I believe the tendency is real.
I agree, and I think the goal of most of us here is to use as little of any kind of poisons possible while still maintaining adequate productivity. I like using some synthetic compounds to reduce the labor of producing fruit, but I manage to spray a quarter as much as commercial growers around here- partially because I don’t always need to produce pristine fruit but also probably because I manage small orchards of not more than an acre or 3 with a wide range of species which may reduce pest pressure over a same species stretch of scores of acres.
I don’t think organic poisons are necessarily safer for people or the environment than synthetic ones, but Surround isn’t poisonous and many organic materials are not poisonous to humans. Still, I’m not at all sure that pyrethrin is safer to use than a pyrethroid beyond the higher concentration factor of the synthetic.
Interesting, thats 100 acres more than in Maryland. I did a search and found one such farm: http://hendersonheritage.com/organic-apples-at-windy-ridge/ - if you read the details they are spraying every 5 days! Its good to hear they can make a profit in spite of all that spraying. They are also growing peaches organically which is impressive. I did it for about ten years but lost half the crop to rot.
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Scott
That’s the farm! He should write a book on organic fruit production. It would help a lot of people get reliable information from someone who is a real expert -growing apples on a significant scale, in a difficult climate with only ORMI chemicals.
I noticed that the grower has the same last name as the extension director for his county. Not sure if that’s the case here, but it sure would be helpful to have a relative in extension.
The Apple specialist for NC has a big poster of that guy spraying his organic orchard with a HUGE cloud of spray behind the tractor. He uses the picture to demonstrate that “organic” is not the same as “no spray”
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Kansas is very high pressure! We can’t miss a single spray. Mistakes are sometimes made and those are the things we remember.
At the moment it’s probably his trade secret. 
Coincidentally, today happened to be an Agrimycin spray day for Fireblight. I used 1.3 grams per tree and after it was all done, filed my Pesticide Use Report with the county.
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.
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Not to mention the annual organic registration fees and increased costs of treatment.
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What do you spray with Agrimycin in December?
Also, are you required to fill out that report for chemicals like Agrimycin that have a Caution signal word?
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:
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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.
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Check this photo:
http://growingfruit.org/uploads/default/original/3X/2/6/26a03d8234c00e433cf07c3503f02ad3da799584.JPG
Unbagged vs ziplock vs organza.
From my post: My Backyard planting experience (Part 2) - Zone 4a/b Quebec, Canada - #11 by hungryfrozencanuck4b
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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.
http://www.kootenaycovers.com/Kootenay_Covers_2010/Home.html
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.
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I am not an experienced apple grower.
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…
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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?
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Apologies, I should have read your subsequent post before I opened my mouth.
Slicko,
On the top rright hand corner of the page, there is a symbol of a magnifying glass, that is the search engine.
Type in “bagging fruit”. Many threads about the subject will come up for you to read to your heart’s content.