First case of Arsenic poisoning I ever saw in a cow was in one that was grazing an old MO apple orchard. Forage samples assayed after we confirmed the diagnosis were off the charts for lead and arsenic.
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For both I do most of the spraying in May… maybe a bit later for you. Early sprays for rot sets it way back for the season. Some years it is so hot and I never spray after early June at all and the rot is still not too bad. This year so far no sprays since early June. I do Indar several times in May, with each Surround.
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I’d like to echo those that had no problems with brown rot in peaches…and then about 5 years in it starts. It’s getting tougher every year to manage the disease and pest pressure in our peaches…even here in Maine.
Thanks for pointing that out. Most Peach loss due to frost/freeze in my part of the country is due to a radiational frost where the temperature inversion you described takes place. Higher elevations have higher temperatures for a period of time during this inversion and are less prone to frost. One large grower of Apples and Peaches in central Virginia has a website that shows how he plants his highest elevations with Peaches. Wind Machines can also break the inversion by pulling the warmer air from higher levels so it replaces the colder air.
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Without being argumentative and going against the people that say it cannot be done. This guy is pretty honest about growing peaches in the NorthEast and as you can see is handing them right off the tree and feeding his children. I think his review is honest and on point for those folks that do not spray and the risks and challenges involved. Impossible? See for yourself.
Nobody is saying impossible, only improbable. Every Powerball lottery has a winner, but that doesn’t mean you are going to win.
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Got to be careful with You Tube Videos unless they come from a source that is knowledgeable and reputable.
Never heard of Blossom End Rot on Peaches that the guy in the video mentioned at around 1:19.
His pruning and trees look terrible. Did not get a close look at his Peaches but they look more like golf balls than Peaches.
Don’t believe I would count on him for useful information.
.
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That no spray peach tree video was 5 yrs ago. Haven’t seen him picking any peaches since then. It is possible that some years he gets some edible peaches depending on weather and insects.
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I could share more stories or info but that would make me an outlier and fodder for scrutiny. The guy asked a question…and i answered for my particular location. I have no doubt that folks living in other areas of the East Coast have much variable information.
Like i said before and i will say it again… my neighbor has been growing peaches for decades…they are ugly, blemished, marred and some split. But they taste good.
He asked for peoples thoughts and opinions and he said he would like to avoid anything other than completely organic compounds…and thats what he got… from me anyways. I dont live in Z7a Asheville…so honestly in all fairness… I shouldnt have answered at all…the (East Coast) baited me in.
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I for one appreciate your perspective. We don’t all have to agree.
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I second that about LI peaches. We have milder temps, atlantic mediated climate and great drainage. I think thats why grapes do so well here too.
Humidity is a rot factor without a doubt.
There used to be a huge peach farm around the corner from where i grew up. Its all condos now. I was so sad to see the trees go.
This is an agricultural health study carried on 63,000 farmers and their wives who lived in Iowa and N.Carolina- states with relatively lax standards compared to my state of NY. The study went on for more than a decade and the graft below shows how much healthier the farmers and their wives were compared to citizens of their states Expected outcomes means the state average. These farmers were of the full range of ages and many spent much of their lives pulling open tractors and living in pesticide fog for much of the growing season. Chill- the main dangers of agricultural chemicals is to the environment- if they were a little more affective at killing off people I think the rest of the species trying to live here would be quite a bit better off. Below the chart is a summary of the original study- the chart even tells a clearer story because it represents an average of 13 years involvement of each subject.
For these farmers, exposure to pesticides is huge compared to the general populace and it pretty much makes a mockery of the obsession with eating organic food, if your motive is all about personal health. I like growing my own vegetables organically because it “feels” healthier, but I think I’m following an irrational impulse. I buy organic to help the environment, but mostly only if it tastes better.
A subsequent summary from 1,198,129 person-years of data with an average participant follow-up period of 13.4 years found that AHS participants are healthier overall than the general population and less likely to die from all causes:
• Study participants are less likely than the general population to die from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, lung diseases, and liver diseases.
• Rates of smoking-related cancers, such as oral, esophageal, pancreatic, lung, and bladder, are lower or similar to rates in the general population.
• Overall injury deaths were lower, but deaths related to machinery continue to be higher among AHS farmers compared to non-farmers.
• A few cancers are more common among AHS farmers, including prostate cancer. Additional studies are being carried out to learn more about the risk of developing these cancers.
Source: Agricultural Health Study 2012 Update
Pages 279-285, April 2005
Mortality among Participants in the Agricultural Health Study
• Aaron Blair, PhD
,
• Dale P. Sandler, PhD
,
• Robert Tarone, PhD
,
• Jay Lubin, PhD
,
• Kent Thomas, BSPH
,
• Jane A. Hoppin, ScD
,
• Claudine Samanic, MSPH
,
• Joseph Coble, ScD
,
• Freya Kamel, PhD
,
• Charles Knott, MPA
,
• Mustafa Dosemeci, PhD
,
• Shelia Hoar Zahm, ScD
,
• Charles F. Lynch, MD, PhD
,
• Nathaniel Rothman, MD
,
• Michael C.R. Alavanja, DrPH
From the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, MD (A.B., R.T., J.L., C.S., J.C., M.D., S.H.Z., N.R., M.C.R.A.); Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, NC (D.P.S., J.A.H., F.K.); US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC (K.T.); Battelle, Durham, NC (C.K.); and Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, IA (C.F.L.)
Received 20 February 2004; accepted 18 August 2004. published online 02 November 2004.
• Abstract
• Full Text
• PDF
• References
Article Outline
I. Purpose
II. Introduction
III. Methods
IV. Results
V. Discussion
VI. References
VII. Copyright
Purpose
This analysis of the Agricultural Health Study cohort assesses the mortality experience of licensed pesticide applicators and their spouses.
Methods
This report is based on 52,393 private applicators (who are mostly farmers) and 32,345 spouses of farmers in Iowa and North Carolina. At enrollment, each pesticide applicator completed a 21-page enrollment questionnaire. Mortality assessment from enrollment (1994–1997) through 2000 provided an average follow-up of about 5.3 years, 447,154 person-years, and 2055 deaths.
Results
Compared with the general population in the two states, the cohort experienced a very low mortality rate. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) for total mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, COPD, total cancer, and cancers of the esophagus, stomach, and lung were 0.6 or lower for both farmers and spouses. These deficits varied little by farm size, type of crops or livestock on the farm, years of handling pesticides, holding a non-farm job, or length of follow up. SMRs among ever smokers were not as low as among never smokers, but were still less than 1.0 for all smoking-related causes of death. No statistically significant excesses occurred, but slightly elevated SMRs, or those near 1.0, were noted for diseases that have been associated with farming in previous studies.
Conclusions
Several factors may contribute to the low mortality observed in this population, including the healthy worker effect typically seen in cohorts of working populations (which may decline in future years), a short follow-up interval, and a healthier lifestyle manifested through lower cigarette use and an occupation that has traditionally required high levels of physical activity.
Key words: Farmers, Mortality, Pesticides, Agriculture, Cancer
If you care to see the study in its entirety message me and I will send it to you.
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How about a compromise? Read these suggestions then send me your opinion on if i should spray these things on food that i give to my neighbor that is pregnant and their young children. I would also like to eat my fruit myself and share my crops with my church.
A leader said to spray Indar and Surround.
Indar- you arent supposed to get it on your skin or even get it near food.
It even says not to use it in residential areas… i have no desire to go on you can read it yourself. The warning label says that there is no antidote if you are poisoned by it.
Surround- Hazardous to Humans and Animals. Cleaning out tanks contaminates water. May cause injury to crops,
animals, man or the environment.
I do not care at all that people use these things and spray them in their communities and give or sell their fruit to others. I advocate for freedom and i have no issue with anyone doing what they want to do.
If u honestly want to help me i am asking since you seem to go out of your way to post things like the above study.
To further your study you talked about above… they figure out what is toxic or not by using the chemicals on animals to determine how toxic they are to us humans… and this study may be of some addition to your report of NC farmers in 2005.
In my laymans opinion…these folks that are advocates of spraying are more at risk to their own health than consumers of their products. Probably increased risk if they spray then eat their own sprayed food. So in essence they are defending things that are more hazardous to their own health than to their consumers.
Since you have obviously sprayed many things and eaten many things that have been sprayed… Would you with your knowledge and expertise give fruit sprayed with the things recommended on this forum to your pregnant wife and children? Would you allow them to walk thru and enjoy and touch and play in the grass and have picnics in these sprayed orchards? I hope you can answer openly and honestly as i am but a layman… and you are an orchardist.
Thank You.
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Chemical labels are very import. Just a quick check of the Signal Word on the label gives you some insight into the toxicity of the chemical but the entire label should be read and followed.
According to the EPA schedule, the Signal words are Caution, Warning, and Danger
Caution is low toxicity,
Warning is moderate toxicity
Danger is high toxicity.
Now for the surprising part!
Check out the signal word for a brand of household bleach which used by a lot of folks.
Label says for the household bleach says “Danger”
Label for Indar 2F says “Caution”
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Nice examples and explanation.
I think people tend to have a distorted picture of what is and is not toxic, and how much so.
Captan fungicide was mentioned earlier in this thread. The lethal dose of captan is 15 g per kg of body weight. The lethal dose of table salt is 0.5 g per kg. Table salt is 30 times more toxic than a common fungicide. Thirty times. Similarly, Captan has a half life in soil of less than 24 hours. Give it a couple days, and for all intents and purposes it’s just gone.
Just because something is artificial doesn’t mean it’s more dangerous.
Heck, just look at all the hippies taking St John’s Wort. St John’s Wort is extremely pharmacologically active, causing dozens of different drug interactions, it’s psychoactive, and it’s moderately toxic, with overdoses causing vomiting, skin blisters, nervous system distress, etc. It’s a pharmacy grade drug, and should be treated as such. The chemical in it is actually an analog of Prozac, and yet the same people who don’t trust the safety of consuming trace amounts of rigorously tested and regulated herbicides gladly pump themselves up on daily uncontrolled doses of Prozac…
I’m not saying those herbicides are safe. Nor am I saying artificial > natural. What I’m saying is, the distinction between artificial and natural does not matter when it comes to safety.
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I love it when people bring in your pregnant wife and children into the conversation, that is by design to scare a lot of people. But salt, any idiot can understand salt.
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I read the label of every pesticide I use every season. You stray from the point. You were suggesting that careless farmers might be exposing kids and the public in general to serious health risks. Only the farmers are in contact with those pesticides at the concentrations in which they are packaged for licensed sprayers like me, and somehow, even with all that exposure, some of which cannot be avoided even when you are very careful (and not all the licensed sprayers I know are careful at all), there is no evidence in this huge epidemiological study that this collective exposure over a lifetime is statistically significantly damaging. If it was bee balm instead of pesticide some would be heralding the healing benefits of a certain amount of pesticide exposure using this study as evidence.
What is the helpful point you are trying to make which will make growing fruit easier? Do you come to this forum to learn about growing fruit?
I encourage anyone using poisons to control pests to read the labels carefully before opening the container they are in and to follow the instructions and regulations carefully. I only wish most of the contractors I have to use to spray some of the orchards I manage followed this rule… unfortunately, many professional sprayers are careless. It seems the trades in this country are no longer guided by the kind of professionalism they should be, or maybe it’s just a northeastern thing.
And yet serious poisonings from pesticides in this country are pretty rare.
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Surround is made of kaolin clay, which is edible, but I would not want myself or my dogs to breathe in the micronized dust or dump it into a waterway (or pipes). Dusty particulates of most anything is not something you want to inhale. Bakers can get “baker’s asthma” from flour dust. If it gets into your water source it makes sense to say it would be contaminated. If I dump a bottle of apple juice into a cistern I’ve contaminated it. I am very careful about what I use and view Surround as very benign.
That being said, I understand and respect not wanting to use anything at all. I’m a very crunchy (for lack if a better word) person and feel if you want to try to do more with less intervention or creative selections then more power to you. I have always heard stories from relatives about an uncle who had a magnificent urban orchard and never sprayed a thing.
*a great great uncle, to be clear
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Yes absolutely “learning” to grow fruit is the #1 reason I joined this forum and I am learning a lot 
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Since you asked…
You are welcome to go back thru my posts since the day that i came here… i have always said that my plan and goal is not to spray. I asked you an honest question since you said u do this for a living… No reply which is fine I didnt think you would answer it anyways.
I do come to this forum to learn about growing fruit. Again you are welcome to go thru my posts. I ask questions and i share my experiences.
If this is a chemical only based fruit growing group then you guys should just go ahead make that a clear point. When a person like the original poster says that they dont want to spray things other than completely organic compounds and avoid anything else… the We Spray This Club are all over the topic like flies on a biscuit.
Why wont you let us no sprayers talk? Are u afraid that we may grow things the wrong way?
Honestly after reading the original poster’s question… i have no idea why anyone would want to offer suggestions of chemicals…and give the statement that “not spraying means no peaches”. Let alone try to prove that farmers that used pesticides 20 years ago are in prime health.
Original Poster- Grow things how you think is best for you and your family. When you say that you dont want to spray anything else than completely organic compounds and avoid everything else…I applaud your desire to do so. There are plenty of groups of likeminded folk on social media groups and also a Fruit Trees forum at Permies.
Maybe one day there will be a No spray or Permaculture or Organic category and the leaders will let us talk about our different ways. I have seen this come up many times but they wont do it.
To quote Dr. Ieuan Evans “All peaches grown from seed are exact clones of their parents”.
The rest of the information on this thread are theories, hogwash, bunk and conjecture.