Hi Alan,
I have used your spray schedule or some modification of it for years. I am wondering if you might have time to update a simple schedule for us small time backyard growers.
That would be really great
Thanks
Did you look under guides? I updated it last year.
Hey Alan, this was the study I read today. Curious, Do you use the two Incesticide together or do you alternate them from spray to spray?
That is a guideline, I think, based on my quick glance- not a study.
I put them in the same mix, once at petal fall and once 10-14 days later. Avaunt alone is often adequate but Assail has some kickback and at the orchards I manage a lot of the tiny fruit will be unprotected for at least a weak before later apples lose their petals.
I am not sure if I have seen your updated guide. I will check it out right now.
Thanks
Hi Alan,
is this the latest guide?
I edited it last year, I didn’t rewrite it. Keep in mind that my pressure isn’t as bad as those with a longer growing season in humid conditions, and worse than those with a shorter one.
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By kickback, you mean what the MSU Extension site calls “curative”?
Imidan (a strong organophosphate, not Restricted Use but not sold in home product stores) and Assail (the neonicotinoid acetamiprid, which was once sold in limited retail channels as the Scotts-Ortho Flower Fruit and Vegetable Insect Killer Concentrate until what Scotts-Ortho once advertised as a breakthrough in offering effectiveness compared to being much less human toxic compared to organophosphate and carbophosphate alternatives, but was withdrawn by Scotts-Ortho, not in response to the EPA but on account of pressure from the environmental community) have the ability to kill the insect larvae that are tunneling into the fruit after egg hatch.
With Sevin being reformulated to an entirely different active agent, the only consumer products are Malathion (a less potent organophosphate), pyrethroids and Spinosad, a biological neurotoxin that MSU extension says isn’t all that effective and needs frequent reapplication?
Have we resolved around here what “commercial and agricultural” use means on the EPA label. Suppose you have a small orchard growing fruit for personal consumption on a farm? Does that mean it is OK to use it? Or does this just mean “not for sale at retail outlets like home product and garden stores”?
My concern is that if make a large-dollar purchase of an insecticide from Keystone or Martins or from the local coop is that I will never use it up before it is long past its expiration date and then me (or my Personal Representative managing my estate) will have to figure out the safe disposal. If I make such a purchase, I don’t want to buy two ag chemicals and have double the problem on this score.
Given the testimonial offered to Avaunt starting this thread, I am beginning to wonder of “kickback” or “curative” is that big a deal. With plums, it is my guessing that once they get “stung” by oviposition, curative or kickback action won’t help because the brown rot will get into the fruit. With apples, I think the curative aspect on maggot fly has allowed me to have, yes, cosmetically blemished apples that will keep long enough in storage for my personal consumption?
My first experience spraying trees was when I bought a 16-oz bottle of Spinosad concentrate. In prior years, my Red Free apples were puckered – does heavy curculio attack do that – and with the use of Spinosad, the were usable. I mixed it according to the label, but I only used 3 applications on the trees I had that season, and I lost most of the Chehalis apples to maggot fly – these apples were cosmetically fine, but they were shot through with maggot tracks and rotted in storage.
Even though I had heavy fungal losses of my Mt Royal plums, I had more than enough plums to eat that year. Maybe Spinosad is effective on curculio, which MSU extension says it isn’t, but it is entirely useless against maggot fly, unless you make frequent applications?
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Thanks
Your comments are thoughtful and useful. It should be the responsibility of the manufacturers to provide a means of disposal of old pesticides, but that would be very expensive and cumbersome if performed by individual companies. Without a desire to argue about this from a political perspective, the most efficient solution would be for the federal government to run a program for the disposal of such products so consumers were not so tempted to deal with the problem in ecologically harmful and illegal ways. The program could be paid for with a kind of pesticide surcharge. Products should be returned to point of purchase and could be priced according to this added expense.
My understanding is that agricultural use is not a very hard label definition, probably out of respect for very small farm operations. You need only have an intent to grow a portion of your crop for sale, as I understand it. Meaning you, could have a tiny stand near your mailbox with some fruit on it and a box to receive money- if even that. How could it be proven you aren’t intending to sell at least some of what you are growing as there are now green markets almost in every town?
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I purchased an 18-oz bottle of Avaunt 30% in wettable granule (WG) formulation, and with petal fall and the “cover” spray coming up, I need to figure out a strategy for applying it. The dosing is a bit more complicated than pouring 3 liquid ounces of a garden center product into a 2-gallon charge of my hand sprayer and then spraying to the point of runoff from the leaves.
The rate recommended for both pome and stone fruit for the pests I want to control is 6 oz/acre and planning on 3 applications this season. I have a 1/3 acre orchard, so I plan on 2 oz of product per application, 6 oz per season, which means the bottle will last me 3 seasons.
6 oz of product are supposed to be dispensed using 50-150 gallons per acre. I am thinking of using the low end of the dilution of about 60 gallons per acre, or mixing 2 oz of product into 20 gallons, which is enough to cover the leaves “to runoff” from prior experience.
This means I need to measure out 5.6 grams of a dry granular product into each 20 gallon charge of my sprayer? I could get a digital “drug dealer” scale, but do I want to be parceling out 6 gram servings out in the orchard?
Could I take two ounces of product and mix it into 30 ounces of water, where I would pour 3 ounces of mix into each 2 gallon charge as I had been doing?
The WG formulation is supposed to be granule that dissolves in water, unlike the WP (wettable powder) version of Captan fungicide, which forms a solid suspension in water that clogs up my spray nozzle? Is 30 ounces of water enough to dissolve 2 ounces of a WG formulated pesticide?
Could I mix up 6 ounces of product into 3 30-ounce bottles of a liquid – I would use empty bottles of Ortho insecticide so someone doesn’t attempt to drink this? How long will this keep in the mixed-liquid state? A season? Longer?
If I am measuring 2 ounces of WG product per spray batch, can I do this as a dry measure using a measuring cup, or do I need to get a digital scale for this?
As I need to store the remainder of the Avaunt WG product in dry form in the original container between seasons, any advice on temperature and humidity conditions for storage. Would a basement that doesn’t go below 50 deg-F be OK? Is the somewhat humid basement OK if I screw the cap on the bottle back firmly?
Any advice on this will be very much appreciated!
I don’t think this is a good idea.
The small tank sprayer mixing rate we figured out here is .04 oz per gallon.
The mixing rate is not volumetric, you cannot use dry measure. You need a scale.
You can get a good scale for 15 bucks on amazon.
My sprayer is 25 gallon so it’s a little easier for me at 1oz
1oz in 25 gallons is 6oz in 150 gallons, which is the upper end of the 50-150 gallon dilution range recommended on the label.
My calculation of 2oz in 20 gallons is towards the lower end of the dilution range. My thinking on this is that I am using a 3 gallon capacity hand-pump sprayer, and I am just wetting the leaves to a slight drip, not really soaking the tree as one might do with power equipment.
Subjectively speaking, how heavy a spray do you apply to the tree? On a gallons-per acre basis, what do you think you are applying? For example, if you spray 25 gallons on a backyard planting, how big is your yard? My trees are in an old farm corral that I paced off at about 1/3 acre?
At the rate you are using, are you getting good control of your target pests?
Thanks!
I spray one ounce in 25 gallons because that’s what Alan suggested, I think. Alan probably has the most experience on this message board spraying small/medium orchards. Also remember large orchards with airblast sprayers are much more efficient than our small sprayers.
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I got myself a “drug dealer” digital scale that I take out into the orchard to tap out 7.5 grams of the Avaunt brown granules to mix into a 3-gallon hand-sprayer charge.
My extension guy also warned me of the need for frequent agitation to keep the stuff in suspension. My extension guy also warned me that “what you are now using isn’t as good on the late-season pests”, I guess meaning my arch-nemesis, the Apple Maggot Fly.
The product label warns that the control of maggot fly will be degraded if you have unsprayed trees on the property, the adult females feed on those trees and then fly to your treated trees, where they lay eggs without having a bite to eat. My last two sprays have been on my earlier-season apples, and I have tank mixed some of my irreplaceable supply of Ortho Flower Fruit and Vegetable Insect Killer Concentrate. The other idea I have had is to spray some old, otherwise untended apple trees on the property, especially the early season one.
My early-season Lodi and Dudley are showing maggot fly strikes, which happened last year using the Ortho product with acetamiprid (Assail) that is supposed to have “kickback”, but my later season apples were OK. So far, I am not seeing maggot strikes on my Duchess of Oldenberg and I hope my rather large crop on the tree of later season apples do OK with Avaunt because I don’t have enough of the Ortho product left.
I have also made a big goof with Avaunt. I reported on another thread that two pear trees, including an early-season Ubileen, were showing blackened leaves. I sprayed them with Avaunt and tank-mixed iron sulfate supplement on the guess the problem was either mites or nutritional deficiency.
The trees are doing better 3 weeks later, but I picked a sample of the bigger Ubileen pears. Oops! The PHI on this stuff is 28 days in pears. I only picked about 5 pounds of pears just before spraying, filling the bottom of a brown paper grocery bag, but they are beginning to smell yummy.
I take a lot of precautions with a respirator, a Tyvek jump suit and a post-spray shower, and here I am tempted to eat this fruit (it is only for personal consumption, not resale). My wife and I decided to “follow the product label” and toss that fruit out, but still.
I did a lot of spraying during my Nafex days in the seventies, not anymore.
Remember the saying, a apple a day keep the doctor away. What about 2 apples a day , would be better? Not according to the government. When you spray your orchard a lot the residual chemicals going in the ground are picked up by the roots going right back up the tree, from there it’s going you know where. The chemicals I have used are much stronger than Imidan. You have to have a license to buy it plus training ,also tags to be hung on the tree’s that tells people not to pick/ steal fruits.
Side note, soon I,ll be 84, still kicking, still driving in the fast lane. Why? Don’t know.
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Government food & drug statistics also show that fresh fruit labeled “certified organic” sold in stores have a higher concentration (on average) of pesticide residuals than fresh fruits without the certified organic label.
Huh? Which government? Please provide a link. Modern common insecticides break down on the tree within about 10 days to the point they can’t even kill a little insect whose entire diet is the sprayed fruit.
Farmers that do a lot of spraying live longer, healthier and less cancerous lives than the average citizen- and many of them bathe in active pesticide- and you are worried about a little residue in the fruit?
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Alan: please stop asking us all for links. Many of us have real-world experiences beyond tree pruning including: real farming; government issued applicator licenses, pest/fertilizer advisor licenses, fertilizer mill licenses; research publications; and most important: the ability to tell the difference between a web page from the research arm of an institution vs. a web-page from a garden club on a university site.
Yes, and some of us make claims I find questionable so I ask questions. Still trying to find out how you came up with your comments about fire blight- but you never bothered to clarify your statements which did contradict the general literature as I understand it. I’m only trying to help keep this forum a source of genuine information and I hope you want the same thing.
If someone believes something based on anecdotal observation, I’m fine with that-as long as it is stated as such, but how is that the case in any of the questions I’ve brought up lately?
Fruit trees take up pesticide via their roots and it ends up in the fruit?- that is quite a claim and I think many folks on this forum would like it clarified. I know I would. You yourself said there was more residue in organic fruit than conventional (and I’d like a link verifying that as well since it is not something that an experienced grower is likely to verify via that experience- aren’t you curious about how that claim could be true?).
Let’s try to keep this real and not some bar where people just share stray opinions. If that is what it becomes, I’m gone.