Richard,
I suspect powdery mildew is higher for you. It’s one of the easiest diseases to treat, but I can understand it may be challenging for you if you don’t use any sprays. I’d be surprised if fireblight was worse in your area than in KC. It’s well established fireblight needs rain or very heavy dew to wash the bacteria down in the flowers. Plus higher temperatures during bloom also increase risk. Both Maryblyt and Cougarblight models are based on those variables. Here in KC, we’d have more rain/heavy dew and probably warmer temps at bloom, hence more fireblight.
I don’t spray for fireblight and have lost some pear trees (which are generally more susc. than apples). I still get strikes in pears (even in blight resistant pears) but haven’t had any completely cooked in a while.
Kansas used to be the 6th largest peach state in the 1890 census. I have an old peach book written in 1898 given to me by a friend. It’s called “The Peach - The Kansas Peach” The book is available in digital form online.
It’s true just about all food was grown organically at one time, but losses were substantial and yields pretty bad by today’s standards. It wasn’t that farmers were opposed to using pesticides, just that they had nothing available. Things like locust (grasshopper) plagues would remove the entire crop. We rarely have those type of events anymore.
Some of the first pesticides were copper based (bordeaux, bluestone, etc.) If you look in the book I recommend above, you’ll note copper was recommended to fight brown rot, scab and leaf curl in the late 1800s. Arsenicals like lead arsenate and Paris green were used extensively in the 1800s. They weren’t used on peach trees except during the dormant season to fight twig borer in western states. Arsenicals are toxic to peach foliage, so they weren’t used during the growing season.
Undoubtedly less chemicals were used for peach growing in Kansas in the 1800s, but it would be a misnomer to think their practices were sustainable. Farmers used cultivation for weed control, which as you know contributed to the Dust Bowl and the erosion of millions of tons of soil every year.
Hogs were used to control PC under peach trees. This actually has some benefit imo. Hogs root up the soil and eat the wormy drops, thereby disrupting the life cycle of the insect. However, even with hogs, PC was considered a major pest of peaches in the 1800s. Today, even if a farmer wanted to use hogs, it would violate new food safety rules (FSMA).
Lastly pests which attack peaches have gone the same way as other food pests. Namely pest pressure has increased substantially over time, mostly due to the introduction of new pests. This is a long a sad history.
Some of the more infamous introductions, were Late Blight, which caused the potato famine in Ireland in the mid 1800s. The boll weevil decimated cotton in the South. It wasn’t until the advent of DDT that southern farmers were able to start growing cotton again. Of course monoculture made the effects of these pests worse, but the point is that farmers didn’t have to deal with them prior to their introduction.
Fireblight was introduced to the rest of the world from the U.S. Even in the U.S. it took some time for it to become established in the Hudson Valley and kill all the pear orchards there. Oriental fruit moth is one of the most significant pests of peaches. It wasn’t introduced in the U.S. until 1913. Fortunately it takes some time for these pests to spread, so it took quite a while for OFM to become ubiquitous in the U.S. Codling moth, the most severe pome fruit insect pest in the U.S. was introduced around 1800. I recall reading it hadn’t yet reached Kansas by the time of the Civil war. Canada has still been able to prevent it’s introduction in certain parts of their nation, to this day. Japanese Beetle was first discovered in the U.S. in 1916. It wasn’t until 1992 that it became established in Kansas. SWD was first found in the U.S. in 2008. Until then a lot of farmers in the South and Midwest prided themselves on growing brambles without sprays, myself included. Not any more. One grower who I knew from a farmer’s market simply quit growing brambles because of SWD. I could go on…
The forest you mention is also a diverse place, but it really doesn’t qualify as a large sample size when evaluating the hypothesis that companion planting can substitute for pesticides. Forests grow a lot of food, but we humans can only consume a very narrow range of the food spectrum (relatively speaking). Any farming enterprise is somewhat anti nature because nature doesn’t grow human food in abundance.
As I mentioned, it sounds like you’ve done a good job of figuring out how to raise fruit in your climate. But those cultural practices don’t translate from a dry climate to a wet one very well. About 10 years ago I stayed at a cabin for a week about 20 miles from Gunnison CO. I know they get a few less inches of rain/year than Denver, but it was so dry it bothered my sinuses. There were no insects. Except for concern of bears, we could have slept with the door open in mid summer. We’d be eaten alive by insects if we tried that in KC.
Water not only produces life, it produces life in abundance and diversity. The ancients recognized this, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” etc. Just like with the insects, we have much more diversity of life in our soil than you could ever have in Denver because of the amount of rain we get. A healthy soil has thousands of species of life in a cubic foot. The wood chips I put down grow all kinds of fungi, bugs, earthworms, etc.
I’ve found most of the commercial growers who promote a no spray culture of fruit growing live in low pest climates. This makes sense to me because we are all somewhat formed by our experiences. The few growers who advocate no spray in wet climates are either new to farming, or don’t really farm.
The link posted above by Mr. Clint 4 years ago is an example of that. Stonegate farm really isn’t a farm. If you look at the pictures on his Website closely, the guy “farms” about 1/2 an acre. Then you look at what he grows and it’s mostly flowers and herbs. He has a few small pome trees. He’s not a farmer, he’s a backyard gardener. Nothing wrong with that, but this man gives lectures on farming sustainability when he’s never farmed and is even on a Congressional Agricultural committee as an advisor (scary). He should stick to advising on marketing and photography, which is how he seems to make his living.
I should probably clarify, if it’s not clear, I am referring to fruit farming and more specifically to stone fruit. Tart cherries and American plums may be able to be grown commercially without sprays, although I’m not aware anyone is growing American plums on a commercial scale with no sprays in a wet climate. Tart cherries may be able to be harvested early enough to avoid sprays in certain wet climates without sprays.
As I mentioned it is possible to grow no spray fruit in wet areas, but selection of species is critical. I grow Pawpaws here with no spray. I used to grow American persimmons with no spray, but didn’t like the taste of them, so pulled them out. I could grow tomatoes with no spray, although I choose to spray them because I don’t have time to pick hornworms off 175 large tomato plants. Plus I’d have significantly more harvest loss to disease if I didn’t spray, but I could get some tomatoes with no spray. Several vegetables can be grown here without pesticides.
