Kocide 3000 on apples & pears

General Fruit Growing
#1

I’m curious to hear folks’ experience on using Kocide 3000 on partially opened apple and pear buds. I’s been a cold, wet, late spring here and my apple and pear trees are just starting top open their leaf buds. Most are somewhere between silver tip to green tip with a few at 1/4" leaf out. The recommended dilution amounts are pretty clear for dormant (2T/g) and fully leafed out (1t/g), but I have not seen any comments about these in between stages.

@scottfsmith did mention a while back that he had used full dormant strength on opening buds without harm, but I am curious if he and others still think this is safe to do.

Normally I could just wait until the trees got fully to the leafed out stage, but the forecast has us getting a bunch of rain and cooler temps for about 5 days, and I’d like to put some fire blight protection on the trees before that hits.

Thoughts?

#2

For me up to pink has been totally fine. In fact I usually aim for that as the later you spray the more effective it will be. In the last couple years I have only done lime-sulfur for dormant spray though, I avoid copper unless it is really needed.