Amount in the soil + amount you spray - amount the tree takes up.
Now how much the tree uses depends on what you do with the leaves and fruit. If you remove all the fruit and leaves yearly then that copper is lost and can be removed from the total. If you leave the fruit and leaves after they drop some of that copper is reabsorbed into the soil.
Now I have no idea how much copper a tree uses in a year, but it’s not going to just add up forever when you spray.
Got my lime sulfur/oil spray in yesterday. The instructions aren’t terribly clear on average dilution, so I used 1/100. I suspect I should have gone 1/50.
@Olpea
Thanks for clarifing the miscalculation. I think however it does not change that much.
In your origional calculation you assumed 1 spray a year. And that would take 50 years for you to see major effects. Correcting for your miscalculation it takes 4 times as long/much.
But there are people who spray 3 times a year. So that means if my grandparents/parents started using it. I would already see the effects. And those effects last almost indefenetly.
Or if we look at a senario where you’d only spray once a year. If my grandparants grandparents started using it. I would see results now.
The difference between 50 years and 200 years is still almost nothing compared to practically indefenetly.
You say your worried by surround AI toxicity.
But the amount of metel a treatement of copper or surround introduce into the soil isen’t that different. 1.5lbs copper vs 2.75 lbs Aluminium.
While copper seems to be orders of magnitude more toxic.
Copper is usualy classified as a heavy metal (although there is much wrong with just classifiing somthing heavy or light)
Al is not.
Luckely Al is renderent almost inert by a PH above 5. Copper is not.
Alluminium is also much more abundant in the earth’s crust compared to copper (% alluminium vs PPM copper) So plants over millions of years have learned to adept to higher Al concentrations. They have not had the same with copper.
This is not to say you should not worrie about AL intropduction. Im just more worried by copper.
This might sound all doom and gloom.
I will likely use copper myself at some point. Im not advocating never using it. Im just saying try your hardest to avoid it. And if you use it, use the least amount possible.
Recycle is the inportant part here. The little bit of copper that reaches the leaves, is usualy incorpareted back into the soil. Or if you move the leaves. Your moving the copper to another soil.
From what i read copper is manly toxic to the roots of tree’s and usualy doesen’t concentrate in leafs. (although species dependant)
However long before it is tocix to roots, it usualy kills of worms and soil life. And those are incredible inportant.
There is practicaly no minus on copper. Your just adding stuff that stays there almost indefinitly. Thats the whole problem. Also since copper is an element. It does not brake down naturaly (apart from nuclair reactions). Unlike large organic molecules that can brake down to just carbon oxygen and hydrogen.
Dosis means everything. In a large enough dose drinking water can (and has) kill people. (a woman died from drinking to much water in a contest)
Same for copper. It is also essential in the human body. In a verry smal amount.
So no copper = problems. But ingesting a single gram of the stuff can kill you! Dosis is everything. And the dosis in you plant food is incredible tiny. The dosis uses as a pesticde is 1000’s if not 100000 times higher.
Think about it just from a human safety point of vieuw. A gram of “pure” copper can kill a person. So what your spraying on an acre is enough to kill 500+ people. If they where to all “eat/drink” the copper from the spray that is.
The main problem here is that we are using a thing that is toxic. But usualy sequestered safely away. And are spreading it around on foodland.
Same princeple as with nucleair energy. That uranium in the power plant is off little danger to me now. But if it gets spread out. It will last for a long time and deal a lot of damage over time.
I don’t think copper is that bad. And i will likely use it sometimes myself.
I don’t want to annoy people by saying what they should or should not do.
I wish copper was completly safe and had no long lasting negative effects. It unfortunatly doesen’t!!!
So im just advocating for appropriate use.
-Use as little as possible.
-Dispose of exces safely.
-Try and mix no more then needed. Don’t use leftovers just for the sake of “not wasting” it. -After you’f reached the minimum absolutly needed amount, less is more
murky,
If Pear Blister Mites are the only thing bothering your Seckel,Sulfur might be all that is needed.
I used the micronized version,during full bloom,for a couple years,with only one spraying and they were gone.
Copper has been used as a fungicide in grapes since the mid 1800’s in Bordeuax mix which is a combination of copper sulfate and lime. Copper in this form is very soluble, can be washed off by rain quickly and has a reputation for burning plant material
Fruit trees are normally sprayed with some form of “fixed” copper which is much less soluble in water. These include products like “Cuprofix Ultra Disperss), copper oxide (e.g., Nordox), copper hydroxide (e.g., Kocide, Champ), copper oxychloride sulfate (e.g., COCS), and copper ions linked to fatty acids or other organic molecules (e.g., TennCop, Cueva).” Some forms of copper are certified as “Organic” by the ORMI.
Is the use of fixed copper as a fungicide on fruit trees safer for the environment than a more modern synthetic material, or perhaps multiple applications of synthetic materials?
I was just using it as a general fungicide on everything I have while in dormancy, since fungus is my largest problem. I’ve got the Brandt product but the instructions tend to swap between gal/acre and gal and gal/100 gallons randomly.
It was my first time ever using it. My earliest plants are waking up so I wanted to get the lime sulfur/oil combo out. I’ll likely spray again soon without the added oil. I hit something that had some green growth deliberately to see what would happen. If there is no damage it shows that my dilution was too much.
True. Most trees die because of their roots are dead. If just foliage dies, the roots can push out a flushing of new leafs.
It indeed, worms and soil life are very important part of plants’ wellbeing.
I respected disagree. Copper existing in leafs and seeds, as well as in cell wall(some research suggests). When we harvest fruits, we take small amount of copper away from the area. When the wind blows the leafs off in the fall(or we do fall yard cleaning) , it takes small amount of copper away from the area.
Copper is movable from soil into the plants in soluble form. Copper is immovable between the plant’s leafs. Copper is immovable ,or movable depends on other conditions in the soil. As long as copper salt is soluble in water , it can be washed away from one place to another by the rain.
Since the plants use very little amount of copper and we are not using large dose of copper in the spray, the copper toxins really isn’t a big issues for home garden/home orchid. IMO
A verry intresting point your making here.
And also somting that somtimes worries me about more organic or “natural” farming practises. I know some die-hard food forrest people. And although what they describe sounds like an utopia.
The amount of food/acre they are producing is 1/2 to 1/5th of other agriculture. In an densly polulated country you would have to cut down all remaining forrest to just switch over a small % of your agriculture to food forrests.
In the end the planet earth is relativly small compared to how much humans there are on it now. You can change that a little by using more efficient agricultural practises.
However most things in agriculture that give you more yield/efficiency today have a long term cost.
I wanted to briefly chime in on the discussion of heavy metals. My primary job at work is building/maintaining/testing water treatment systems for abandoned coal mine drainage. The metals we primarily test for in Western Pennsylvania are Aluminum, Iron, and Manganese. Copper, rare earth metals, selenium and a few others are found in much smaller concentrations in the “sludge” that we capture. The process goes in succession based on pH, as follows. Around 3.5 pH, “low pH” iron is formed by reactions with iron fixing bacteria (or “bugs” as we field folks like to call them). At around 4.5 pH, aluminum precipitates, and around 7 pH “circumneutral iron” oxidizes and precipitates out of the water as a solid. Around 10-11 pH, manganese oxidizes and precipitates out of the water.
There have been some bench scale facilities (only a few million dollars invested) to process the solids that form (primarily the low pH iron) to quantify the amount of rare earth elements, silver, gold, copper etc that form alongside the reactions that oxidize the iron in the water. It is VERY expensive and a complicated process to perform these steps, but I don’t think copper falls high on the list.
As was previously mentioned, aluminum is probably a non issue at or above a 5 pH. Below, it’s possible that it may become water soluble, however I don’t believe it is as bad as copper can be at high levels. It will still turn a pond the color of a tropical blue lagoon (very pretty if you don’t realize what it is).
Chemistry is not my strong suite, but I am pretty good at keeping limestone clean! I hope this contributes something meaningful to the conversation.
Technicaly your removing extreemly small amounts of copper everytime your removing leaves and fruits from your growing soil’s tree’s.
However most plants and tree’s only have “high” concentrations of coppers in the roots. And you don’t “harvest” the roots. In fruits and leaves the PPM copper is almost always lower then in the soil.
So your removing less copper by removing 1 lbs of dry leaves, than by removing 1lbs of soil.
Your technicly also removing copper every time soil sticks to your boots when walking away from your orchard. However this won’t measurable make any pratical difference over a span of 10000+ years in the soil copper content.
So practically your not removing copper from your system. The export amounts are so insignificatly small that you won’t see a measurable difference in 1000s years.
What do you mean by " copper is immovable between the plant leafs?
The thing is, copper salts will disolve in “pure” water. However your not growing tree’s in a pure water pond. But in soil. And copper will bind to a lot of things in soil. Mostly organic materials. And those organic materials play an active role in nutriant cycles and soil life. And thus keep the copper bioavailable for really long times. Copper in soil is not water soluble. And thus does not (or virtually not, it will over a million years) leech away from soil with rain.
I would love to say copper is completly harmles. Scientific knowladge says not. Good news is that it’s not short term extreemly toxic. Bad news it does build up long term to toxic levels in 1 or a few lifetimes. Reason enough to use less or use it responsible.
So is there somewhere copper buildup is so bad the area was abandoned? We have been using copper a few hundred years now where are examples of what we are trying to avoid?
Also copper is here to stay. It’s not like we can make more or remove it. We can move it from one place to another. It always has to be someplace on this earth. Anyway it would be cool to study what copper did to an area and why? So we don’t make the same mistake again. So if you know of examples please elaborate on them if you don’t mind?
Land application of textile sludge is still common in some areas. This sludge contains not only copper but also metals like chromium and cadmium. If the soil PH is right the heavy metals bind with soil particles and do not wash into the water table. If I remember properly the land can be used to grow animal feed but not products for human consumption for a while.
I believe a few pounds of fixed copper sprayed on fruit trees several times a year would produce a tiny fraction of the amount applied by land application of textile sludge. Waste water treatment sludge is also routinely applied to farm land. Not sure about the level of copper or heavy metals in the sewage sludge but I expect it’s pretty high. At some point a popular organic fertilizer which was made from processed sludge had a problem with heavy metals in their product but I can’t remember the name of the product