June Princess Nectarine

Congratulations Cityman, on such beautiful and tasty fruit. I know you’ve had so many disappointments (with the herbicide incident, and OFM) I’m thrilled to see you harvest a good bunch of fruit.

Regarding your spray schedule, I know you didn’t ask my opinion, but you might consider experimenting with a little longer spray interval with Imidan. Commercially, recommendations are 7-10 days in early sprays, then stretch to 10-14 days for cover sprays for general insecticides.

Additionally, organophosphates tend to be really strong insecticides. In other words it takes a very small amount to kill the insect, in spite of the fact that large doses are sprayed on the trees, which also helps protect the fruit for longer intervals (or rain wash off).

I’ve personally never used Imidan, but have used the organophosphates Diazinon and Lorsban and can attest they seem to have long activity. Lorsban works so well on borers, that only one application per year is all that’s generally required.

I understand if you don’t want to risk the fruit you’ve worked so hard to get, but if you wanted to, you could perhaps experiment with a few less sprays on a couple trees to see how it works for you.

Again congrats on the bounty!