I ended up removing the foil because the next two days are going to be fairly cool. I feel like by that point the next hot spell won’t hurt them as much, because they will have already been well on their way, but I may reattach the foil for a couple days next week.
Yes, that’s a good point Scott. The seedling I didn’t graft was not very healthy the previous year. I successfully grafted a scion onto it 2 years ago and the scion leafed out last year and grew for a little while but the scion lost vigor and ultimately died off. It’s now just leafing out so we’ll see if it regains vigor.
Peach grafts have done great so far. This is one of the seedlings I did and the backup grafts on my yard tree.
Cicadas effed up most of my grafts this year.
Hopefully there is enough energy left to send new shoots.
They are destroying all my non-grafted peach rootstocks. The big peach trees and the new grafts are so far doing OK though. My guess is I didn’t hit the rootstocks with Surround and the grafts are growing slowly so no wood to lay eggs in.
Surround did nothing for me. Or, I just have such a huge infestation it would’ve been 10 times worse without it.
They have literally found a 2 inch piece of growth on my grafts to lay eggs in, they are relentless.
By the way, when it comes to print off any damage growth, I have two different thoughts, looking for opinions:
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As soon as the vast majority are gone, just go ahead and go in and prune and try to shape, and then let new growth sprout where it may.
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wait a bit longer and see where the trees themselves have decided the wood is still alive and able to push new growth, and then prune accordingly.
Your situation does sound worse than mine but I’m not sure how you could have any more bugs … I was out yesterday and all the apple and pear trunks were totally covered with bugs. Anyway I am glad I have the Surround up.
Re: pruning, it is going to be summer pruning time anyways when the bugs are gone and I am going to try to prune out as much of the damage as I can without removing too much fruit or too many leaves.
I had it much worse 17 years ago with many 2nd year trees and with damage on what would be scaffolds, I pruned all of the damage out so I would not have distorted scaffolds and lost a year of growth more or less.
I honestly think it’s because a lot of large trees were removed since 2004, so I have same numbers of bugs trying to use less total tree coverage area.