So… Out of my 100 plus trees I have 8 apple trees, 2 pear trees and 2 cherries blooming.
As to those peach, plum nects, hybrids and apricots that are not blooming how do I modify the spray strategy for them.
The silver lining is that I will have more time reworking some of the structures of the espaliers that were neglected last year.
The &@$*#% lining is that I will be spending more time at the roadside stands picking my fruit this year.
MIke
Mike:
That’s very disappointing. This is a difficult hobby in that we only get one shot a yr and there really aren’t that many yrs in a lifetime. Hang in there. Next yr will be better…I hope!
Many of the fungal infections can get into wood, or at least can be spore covered. I spray the same myself, at least for fungicides. Insecticides can be excluded in most cases. Depends who you’re spraying for.
And yeah so much for the Great Lakes protecting me, most of my stone fruit looks fruitless too. Possibly cherries will ripen, but that’s about it. Which is cool, both sweet and tart I never had. I’m going to dry the Carmine Jewel Cherries, high brix tart cherries dried should be awesome!
Agreed with Drew, keep up the disease sprays (except fruit-only ones like brown rot sprays) but remove the bug sprays. One very small bit of good news is missing a year will mess up the bugs, there will be fewer next year.
I wouldn’t bother spraying the peaches and nects beyond the dormant copper. The only thing I worry about with peaches is canker which doesn’t show up much on young healthy trees. Scab and CAR susceptible apples are probably worth at least a couple shots of myclo and keep you eyes open for tent cats.
If psyla isn’t part of your pear pest complex I wouldn’t bother spraying them either.
I’m speaking of the majority barren trees, of course.
I only seem to have Shiro J. plums, most of my E. plums, late blooming apples and lots of Harrow Sweet pears. Maybe I will manage a couple of my nursery cherry trees for fruit as well because cherry blossoms are full blown. Some of my nursery apple trees will certainly be orchard trees for me this year.
I’m still finding out if I will have a tiny scattering of peaches and nects.
I had heavy pear psylla problems last year.
Psylla photos later in the thread
Need to treat for those uglies. When and what is the treatment for these?.
Mike
I use 2% oil a couple weeks ago and then monitor them. If your problem is psyla you can see them with a mag glass at the base of leaf stems on leaves at the tips of new shoots.
Oil only suppresses them, which can be adequate. If you also coat the growing shoots with a heavy coating of surround it should be more than adequate. Many poisons will work for a time as well but even conventional pear growers in our area are sometimes using Surround for this pest.
I’ll expand this question a little. I have only about half of my trees that have bloomed.
Do I need to spray the ones that will have no fruit just in case the bugs are sitting over there in a tree with no fruit?
I would have assumed yes and sprayed them until this question came up.
With peaches spray for borers… or anything with peach rootstock.
Most fruit pests are attracted only to the fruit. If you are protecting foliage from fungus I think you know to spray all trees- I wouldn’t bother spraying barren trees with insecticide unless I was protecting the foliage on those trees from insects.
If there were excessive mites on the apple leaves I’d spray all the apples for mites- probably even the apple trees without mites. Same thing for psyla in pears. But I wouldn’t target plum curculio or coddling moth on trees without fruit.
I agree with Alan, a good approach. Also I use a couple fungicides for brown rot, but they also stop other fungi, so I myself still use them.Often too I’m out there spraying something else and may hit the trees too. With emphasis on “may”, depends what I using. Tom Spellman is a big fan of using kelp as a foliar spray, I spray once a year manganese sulfate because my soil has low amounts and 2 years ago i saw deficiencies in the stone fruit leaves. So I hit most of my plants, and add seaweed while I’m at it. Tom likes the powdered kelp, I don’t really use it for anything else, but the Neptune’s Harvest seaweed fertilizer has all the trace minerals so I like to hit my seedlings with it (tomatoes and peppers). So I keep some on hand and use as a foliar spray for the stone fruit. It can’t hurt, may not do anything? Again though i want it for my seedlings. I don’t like to keep it long so use it up and buy fresh every new season.
New to the group, but not new to orcharding (it just seems like that some times). In a frost pocket in otherwise zone 5 in the Finger Lakes. We will also be almost blossomless this year after one late zero degree (F) night. Will be spraying Serenade today. Won’t be turning our trees into a ghost orchard with Surround this year.
That’s deep philosophy in it! I like your statement, Fruitnut…
My expression is, it takes 4-5 years to see the “fruits”, literally, of your labors. Provided that we take all the right path, no straying, no mistakes made. That’s already half a decade. How many decades that we human have? Minus the formative years/decade(s), and minus the ending years/decades in old age with illnesses, we don’t have much left! 
Sorry for the negative feelings here! It’s still spring time ahead! 
Tom
No negative feelings there. It is POSITIVELY AGGRAVATING
Mike
Yes but by next year this blank one will have entirely lost its significance- except to make me more appreciative of a crop, if I get it.
Yeah I have learned to savor the harvest, of anything! I wish I would have started more fruit earlier in my life, but you can’t go back, so it is what it is. Good news for me is my peaches and nectarines got hit, but it looks like it is not a total loss. I’m not sure how many will survive? Maybe about 10 per tree, so at least I’ll get a taste! Well I have tasted them all last year! The winner this year is Carmine Jewel. Flowering later, taking longer, the whole crop is there. Hundreds of cherries. And it’s a little tiny plant! Like 3 feet tall! The Romance series work very well here! At least Carmine Jewel! I’m thinking of drying them and that will increase sugars. Well I’ll make a pie too, the dried cherries can be eaten or used in cooking too, like muffins, scones etc.
Yeah, my carmine Jewel set fruit very well too. Will have good crop of this cherry. Do you dry it with pit in or out?
I never dried them before, although I was thinking of removing the pit. Open, it should dry faster, and evenly. It’s sort of an art, you have to know when it’s dry enough. You don’t want to powder it, so I will do a few as tests to see how it goes. I have dried whole peppers seeds and all, so either way should work. You want them to bend but not crack. I love fried whole peppers. They stay extremely fresh even 2 years after drying. If you powder them they begin to lose potency so I do keep some powder, but now mostly use whole peppers and flake them before use
Drew, Don’t be afraid to use Neptune Harvest on everything and anything. I use it on everything I grow and eat and it does make for nice healthy strong plants, which are in turn more resistant to creepy crawlies and disease.
They came out with a new mix this year with a red label, Tomato and Veg formula I think its called. I bought a gallon of it and see no difference between it and their standard fish juice mix.
Regarding peachless trees and Brown Rot spraying:
I don’t understand this. I was under the impression that we were spraying the fruit for protection against brown rot, especially late in the season. I learned that one the hard way a couple years ago, but since then have been spraying Monterey Fungus Fighter about a month before harvest and have had good results.
If I have no peaches (I actually found about 6 peaches total on 2 of my 8 trees) on certain trees, why do I have to spray for brown rot? What is going to rot?