I might characterize this in the future as ‘Low Impact Spray Schedule in the Eastern US’ or some other caveat where the pest and disease pressure seems much higher.
I found this while searching for something along the lines of ‘minimal spray schedule’ and now feel much better about my existing practice in Utah, where fruit seems easy by comparison…It’s not all perfect and blemish free, but for home use, it works.
Everything gets horticultural oil once in the spring, otherwise…
Plums - nothing
Cherries are spinosad once a week for 3-4 weeks for worms in June while they ripen.
Peaches are Spinosad for peach tree borer during season and earwigs at the end of the season, and pyrethrin for Greater peach tree borer on the lower trunk once a month.
Nectarines - maybe Spinosad for earwigs during ripening
Apricots - I’ve given up because of late spring freezes.
Apples - a perfect apple is a rare thing with codling moth without a serious commitment (though you can alway just cut the bad part out), otherwise fire blight and powdery mildew.
Blackberries - no problems or treatments
Pears - codling moth and fire blight.
If others have suggestions, I’m open to them. Maybe I’m just lucky or am dodging bullets I don’t know about…I’ve been growing for 11 years now at our house and am still harvesting from the original trees I planted for the most part.
Yes this does not apply all that much for you. I give a big, bolded caveat to that effect right at the top.
Basically anyone in the US that is not in the northern or western tier needs to follow something like this so it is not easy to add a geographical qualifier to the title without making the title take several lines.
For stonefruit I can make that a month usually and two weeks reliably for everything besides cherries. However with all your multigrafts and range of varieties, I can see why you would settle on a week.
Nectarines are the only “peach” that has rotted much in the last 3 seasons after receiving one timely summer fungicide spray. Just one- and those have all been reasonably wet seasons, just not very hot. I have harvested fine early ripening nects with the single summer spray. Understand that I didn’t focus on timing for every variety and it is possible that even later ripening nects could have been protected, with a perfectly timed single fung. spray, especially when un-cracked.
I do include fungicide in any spring sprays I do, which may reduce the inoculum in the summer.
Last week when we had several days in a row with temperatures in the sixties (F), I discovered I had no dormant oil left over from last year. We only go into town once a week to do shopping, egg delivery, and other errands, and yesterday I bought some, but only after turning back part of the way home. So today was going to be the day. Forecast yesterday was for today being mostly to partly cloudy and a high of 45°F. Today is actually rainy with a high so far of 37°F. Tomorrow is supposed to be breezy and cold, but for sure I can get back on the spray schedule Saturday.
Apologies if reviving old threads is not cool here. I’m sure these are very newb questions as well.
I’m just learning about spraying for disease control and prevention - and still confused about timing. Is “bud swell” referring to vegetative bud swell or flower bud swell? Flower bud swell is happening well before that right? So is it okay to spray once flower buds are swollen and getting ready to open or is it too late?
I am looking to spray copper octanoate on my apricots, peaches, apples. On peaches for prevention, on apples hoping to help with a leaf rust that’s been a problem, and on apricots hoping it will help with bacterial canker (I’m aware it’s a fungicide but I read that somewhere…). I’ve heard peach borers are a problem here - so am I right in thinking to spray dormant mineral oil after the copper? I may try painting the lower tree with neem oil as I’ve been told that’s effective here.
I have gotten excited about Regalia spray after reading this post and more on it, and I got a quart to try out. I’m curious if you use full PPE for spraying this. I generally follow the labels, and I use goggles, respirator, and gloves for copper spray - so probably will for this too. I was thinking it’s probably less noxious than copper due to the nature of the product, but not knowing the other ingredients who knows.
I work with Japanese knotweed root (not the same plant in Regalia but closely related) in my work as a Chinese Medicine herbalist and I was thinking of trying to make my own extract, but I have no idea what concentration, extraction method, or even which plant part they are using so I decided to try Regalia first. But I may have to do an experiment in the future. I’m sure that making a pure root extract would be benign enough to spray without PPE, but maybe not strong enough to do the job.
I don’t think this stuff is very toxic. The label only suggests to use full body covering (long-sleeve shirt and pants, eyewear, etc). That is all I ever do.
Scott, have you found there to be any neem dilution that’s acceptable for paining on apple trees? Or best avoided altogether? I finally got my trees latex painted (yay!) but in the past few years I allowed some sunburn to occur and some of my apples have suffered some borer damage.
I don’t think myclo is the best brown rot spray, at least based on my experience. I have seen charts rating it well and some average.
I am surprised your stink bugs were not bothered by the Surround. Leave one tree untouched and I bet it will be crawling with stink bugs, you always get some with Surround or not but I have found it is much worse where there is no Surround.
I use Stollers for dormant oil, not sure it is still available though.
Domant oil is kerosene! It’s just a highly refined and emulsified form. It evaporates within minutes, but not before it smothers insects that are just coming out of dormancy.
I use it — not because of any personal experience of not using it — but because everybody says you have to. They say, “Apply dormant oil for aphids, scale, and mites as needed above 40° before silver tip.”
