I should know the answer to this, but I want to verify that I’ll be ok if I do what I have planned…
Keep in mind that most of my trees are still fully dormant.
First, let me also ask another dumb question…In the past I’ve always sprayed “horticulture oil” on my dormant trees. I just found that I can buy Neem oil for not much more money at the local co-opt. In the past Neem was 2-3 times more expensive than whatever the Horticulture oil I was buying was. SO my first question is this:
Would it be ok to use Neem oil as a dormant oil? If so, is there any advantage. It is still a bit more expensive, just not as much as what I’d found in the past. The bottle says it has antifungal, insecticide, and miticide properties. I’m not sure what degree, if any, it has those properties or if regular Horticulture oil also has them, but I’d be interested in hearing opinions of using Neem as a dormant oil instead of generic Hort Oil (which I am not sure what kind of oil that would be in my case (ie what I’ve bought in the past)
I had terrible brown rot last year so I planned to spray myclobutanil this year as a late-dormant spray. I also thought I’d spray imidan BEFORE BUDS OPEN, during late dormancy. Also please know that I have EXTREME insect pressure each year from both PC and OFM. Extreme. So the question(s) is/are:
Is there any point in including Imidan in a late dormancy period spraying (before buds, I know I don’t want to harm bees and pollinators)?
If imidan could be useful, IS THERE ANY PROBLEM WITH MIXING ALL 3 OF THE AFOREMENTIONED things in one tank and spraying it along with a sticker?
Yes, I should know all this but I’m not sure and I bet others might have same questions? Thanks all.
I think mixing them is fine, but timing is everything. I’m not using any of those products. The ones I do use have limited applications and for brown rot instructions on one of the products I use says first spray should be at green tip. I use 2 products for brown rot, one you can do 5 applications the other 4. So i start with the 5 application product first at green tip. Applications are 14 and 21 days apart to remain effective. So with the 21 day product I get 4 sprays so 2,5 months. If I started now I could not apply anymore past mid May.
I use Imidan on many of my fruits. Yes it does seem to offer fairly good control of PC except for last year as SE WI was terribly wet all of April to Early July. I sprayed Imidan for PC in June (our curculio season is bad the first 1/2 of June) and I still got
more damage than I wanted to see. Tough to prevent when it was raining every other day.
I have used Imidan and myclobutanil together and had no issues as far as being incompatible in the same tank mix.
I cannot answer your questions on dormant oil as I stopped using it several years ago since mites so far have not been an issue for me. I am not sure why you would want to spray Imidan with a dormant spray? Normally PC should not be a problem that early in the season when the trees are still dormant.
Neem oil can be added to hort oil…you can even make your own oil and use some Neem in it; It can be used quite dilute. I found it at my local co-op and it was very expensive as a little specialty oil. I found it on-line (ebay) for about $17 per pint from several ‘bulk’ sellers.
I don’t use Imidan but I agree with @Spartan that there is no need to spray before bud open or even during bloom. I know you have high PC and OFM pressure but you could figure out their movement by setting up traps or keeping an eye out on temperature. The timing usually coincides with shuck split (for peaches).
I would not spray insecticide before shuck split. It’s wasteful and ineffective. There is also a good chance that the spray would harm beneficial insects (bees and others) when you spray during bloom.
Re. brown rot. I used myclobutanil in the past. It did not work for me. Myclobutanil works well for apple cedar rust (CAR) but not against brown rot. If you don’t have Indar, try Infuse (formerly known as Monterey Fungi Fighter). It’s more effective on brown rot than myclo.
I don’t know about mixing neem and oil, etc. At this point, I only sprayed Kocide (copper), dormant oil and Nufilm.
See…this is exactly why I posted the question. Honestly, it was dumber than I thought. Even I should have known Imidan wouldn’t help anything fore petal fall. But year after year it seems like no matter how often and how much I spray for OFM and PC, I still loose a lot of fruit to them, as @mamuang stated. So the idea of including Imadan was just a crazy thought I was having now while I’m on the verge of a whole new growing season…just trying to give myself every imaginable advantage against my mortal enemies. I will say that after I switched from Triazicide to Imidan I get a lot less damage. The damage I get while I’m using imidan might be explained by me waiting a little to long after a hard rain to reapply or perhaps me not getting perfect coverage. Who knows for sure. But thanks to all the kind and helpful people on this thread, my senses have been restored and I won’t waste my time and money putting imidan in a mostly dormant spray round!
But I think I will use the neem, and I learned a good deal from your post about it, @Seedy. I actually paid $16.99 for a pint of need at my Co-Op. I’ll have to check and see if it is the same strength as the one you found.