Scottfsmit, thank you for the info on the chemicals. I tried to not use any of the toxic sprays as well but I had no luck. At this point I have had no luck with the toxic chemicals either. I put in so much money and effort in on these trees yet I feel like I have failed at this point. I am not getting a much of a return on the investment of the trees. I do enjoy the process of watching them grow and appreciate the gardening efforts so I do have some return but I would like to get some fruit as well. What is difficult is paying the money for the bags and sprays and taking the time to do all of that and then seeing hundreds of little crescent bites day after day and seeing yet another year lost. I feel a bit heartbroken by it which might sound nuts but I do.
Does the Surround work well from your experience or do you use other methods with the Surround?
I have not used the Bonide eight and I did not check my pH before I used my other spray. What would I use to acidify the water? The spray smelled awful and coated everything and even caused some fruit burn so I figured the application was good and thick but still it failed to stop these bugs.
I do have persimmons and jujube as well that I do not need to spray and I’m almost to the point of saying I will just grow these from now.
Do you suggest I should use the eight and surround next year or something else? Should I check my water pH before I spray?
Thanks for the reply and suggestions. I used Sevin one year but all the fruit dropped off. I thought the fruit drop was because of the Sevin so I never tried it again. Maybe I will consider it again as I have always had luck with Sevin on my squash plants.
Thank you for your experience with Surround, I do not think I could effectively control the curculio here with it. I am not sure where they all come from but they hit my backyard with a strong power and it really is such a horrible feeling seeing hundreds of fruit become useless. This is yet another year lost and they actually hit my apples and pears fairly hard this year as well. These bugs almost make me want to give up on growing fruit trees.
You may want to move up your first spray to petal fall. The plum curculio in your area may be moving into trees earlier than you think. You also could use this free model from Cornell to better estimate when plum curculio become active. The user can select a local weather station as the data source from within the model to better follow plum curculio activity.
Matthew,
I can sympathize with you regarding your thought about wanting to give up growing fruit trees. A lot of us in high pest and disease pressure areas have that thought once in a while.
This thought is more pronounced when we grow “high maintenance” fruit trees like stone fruit, peaches, nectarines, cherries, plums, etc.
There are more than plum curculio but since you need help with this # 1 pest, we will only focus on it.
It is not just Surround. Scott has used several approaches to make his low impact spray works for him. I mixed Spinosad and/or BT with Surround to fight against OFM, another serious peach enemy. Surround alone can help esp if you start early and reapply when needed. @mroot said, it could be that your area is very high PC pressure you need to move up your first spray to petal fall.
Like someone said, the chemical I see people here use that appears work with very well is Imidan (from very clean fruit they show). Imidan is not supposed to be sprayed in residential areas so that disqualify a lot of us living in urban areas. Also, as of this year, with new definition, shipping Imidan is a lot harder. Places like Keystone Solution does not ship it anymore https://www.keystonepestsolutions.com/imidan-insecticide-70-w-5-pounds-399
The others chemical that gain more popularity among backyard growers is the new Sevin with zeta-cypermetrin as the main ingredient. The old stand by is Triazicide (Gamma-cyhalothrin). You are right that the old Sevin (with cabaryl as the main ingredient) has fruit thinning effect.
Other chemicals with brand names like Avaunt, Actara, Delegate. I was told are effective against PC. Those are a commercial grade and may come with some restrictions when using any of them.
Besides what to use, when to use it is as important. Some people can use these chemicals effective and need only 2-4 spray to get the pests and diseases under control.
I echo the suggestion to use the new formula Sevin, which has been very successful for me. Before using Sevin I also tried malathion (but I didn’t know about the water acidification at the time, thanks @Drew51) I think the Sevin formula changed in 2018, and it was a major change, moving from carbaryl to zeta-cypermethrin.
Thank you again mamuang, I really appreciate the links and all the advise. I think I will try the Sevin and Surround next year. I might switch to sevin for later spraying in the year because the spray I am using now has caused burning of fruit and leaves. Not sure if Sevin protects against OFM but I will look into it.
Thanks to everyone that has chimed in and offered suggestions and links to more information. It is unfortunate that I have lost my stone fruit crop yet again this year but hopefully I will be better prepared for next year. I appreciate all of the help.
Mathew,
Fortunately I have not had to fight curculio here, but we have some fairly difficult insects to control such as Apple maggot fly and codling moth. Together they completely destroy apples. Surround alone does not really work well, but if you apply it with a surfactant, and lace into the slurry a couple chemical agents such as malathion and Bonide fruit tree spray with carbonyl it pretty effective against most any pests. I suspect cuculio would not survive an encounter. Probably Sevin may just as effective with malathion. The key to using surround is to apply 3 coats on the first spray after petal fall before your fruit is size of a quarter. Give some time for each coating to dry before applying the next. Then after every rainfall or no more than two weeks spray again, always increasing the coating on the fruit. If you do this you will not need to bag any fruit!
At time of harvest you simply give the ripe fruit several soapy water baths and a rinse and it’s ready to consume.
Dennis
Kent, wa
Any type of dishwashing liquid soap breaks down water surface tension and acts to make the slurry sticky. The first time you spray it will run off the apple if not with surfactant. Only a tablespoon in2 gal is needed. Now if I am spraying apples or any fruit that will benefit from boron treatment I used 20 mule team powder in addition to give the foliage some boron.
Dennis
I think I will probably just use the Sevin. Maybe if I can get the population down on the PC I can start to reduce the spraying overtime but ill hit them with an aggressive spray schedule next year. Hopefully the spraying will help me get some fruit next year.
I forgot to answer you about Clemson bags. It is effective if
You put them on fruit before bugs drill a hole in them (some newly damaged fruit is not easy to spot)
you put them on well so they do not get blown away by wind gust
you follow the recommendation of spraying fungicide and pesticide before bagging. Because you need to wait for peaches to reach a thumb size to bag. By then, if you don’t spray, almost, if not all, of your peaches would be ruined.
Clemson suggested one spray of insecticide and fungicide (due to brown rot) . My experience is that that is not enough for my area. Even with two times, I still got some brown rot and bug damage. This year I sprayed the combo 3 times before I bagged.
Why bag? So I don’t have to spray any more for the rest of the season for my peaches/nectarines. Also, I only have a few trees so bagging is not too much work.
You can order them here. It need practicing to be efficient at it. You will learn which fruit to keep based on their position on a branches and twigs. You want to position them in a way that they are easy to bag.
In my younger days in a commercial orchard the standard mix was Captan and Imidan for everything, and it worked pretty well. Now I follow IPM practices and use only Surround on peaches. For me it’s great because the small percentage of fruit that gets dinged by the Curculio is easy to spot and remove in the near constant fruit thinning I have to do. What I really hate is Peach tree borer, but I’ve found that Spinosad seems to control them used as a soil drench, along with protecting the trunks.
I second the Clemson bags. I sprayed with Surround, Indar and spinosad several times after petal fall, then bagged peaches/nects. Peaches did well this year. The nects though suffered a lot of PC damage I didn’t discover until much later. The disease fruit will ooze/discolor inside the bag or just wither and fall off the branch. I just bought Avaunt for next year as Surround and Clemsons just aren’t sufficient here. Clemson bags are easily reused if not torn. I’m reusing them on tomatoes now.
I have used Clemson bags for 4-5 years now. I want to spray as organically and as minimally as I can. However the mixture of Surround, Spinosad and Indar (twice) before bagging has not been enough.
In a good year, I got about 20% damaged fruit and in a bad year, the damage was up to 40% in the Clemson bags (more brown rot than bug damage)
After all the work including bagging, the %of damage fruit was too high. I am tired of a low return on my investment. This year, I sprayed Indar and zeta-cypermethrin 3 times before I bagged, i have noticed little damage from PC, OFM or CM.
However, I got more damage from stinkbugs and Tarnished Plant bugs more than usual. I think they started feeding before all petal fall (not every fruit have the same petal fall time line). I just don’t want to spray when some flowers are still blooming. Zeta cypermethrin is lethal to bees and other beneficial insects.
If my bagged peaches have less brown rot this year, indar 3 times is an answer.
40% damage wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t go to the trouble and expense of bagging. I’m surprised you have to bag fruit where you are because pest pressure should be about the same as where I am and Surround works pretty well for the orchards here. My sched for Surround is 4 sprays once a week beginning when last apples are starting to lose their petals (as opposed to have lost most of them in my synth schedule).
However, last year one of the people who does some spraying for my organic customers got confused and waited an extra week- did 4 sprays 2 weeks apart and we still got good results at the 3 orchards he sprayed for me. It makes me wonder if we couldn’t succeed with 3 sprays 10 days apart- I’m pretty sure that 4th spray was a waste of time as spring pest pressure was over by then- we don’t get much apple fly maggot here for some reason.
For brown rot, a single spray of Indar a month before a variety ripens generally does the trick except with nectarines and cherries when they are cracking. But I use Tactic as a sticker and that might make a difference in efficacy of Indar because latex works better than pine resins. I believe thorough coverage of fruit is as important with Indar as it is with Surround and it can be hard to really cover the bottom of fruit with a hand sprayer.
Incidentally, I’m currently harvesting apricots that didn’t receive a single insecticide (or Surround) spray this year, just a single app of Indar about 6 weeks ago. Not a single insect bite or worm so far with Early Blush and the harvest is in.
