Cherries are coming in here. Usual amount of worms even though I missed spraying all together. Would like to give some praise to White Gold though. Not a large crop sample, but absolutely no worms. With no spray. I’m sure it’s a one off.
This year was not favorable for stone fruits. Not much set and a lot of that is dropping. Pears never let you down though.
I’ve had a lot of OFM but it was my fault for not spraying spinosad earlier. I’ve got it down and there is no new fruit or shoot damage. PC bit some of my Asian pears. There are some spotted lanternfly nymphs to spray, but fewer than last year.
I’ve been seeing a lot more foliar diseases this year. Maybe it was our rainy May contributing.
I guess I would say that the PC is normal. I only have a handful of of years with producing peaches under the belt so I don’t gave a long data set with which to compare. I have had to knock down (twice) aphids on many of the newer apples. The thing that stands out to me so far is the great number of lantern fly nymphs that I have been finding and killing.
Hey the peach tree borer is emerging now… I found a couple casings yesterday at the tree bases. So I did my neem treatment.
If you have not had this pest yet make sure to keep your eyes on your peach tree bases for goo with sawdust in it. They are very common and they could show up any year.
I would say I had the normal amount of PC damage, some but not enough to ruin an entire crop. I am picking Juliet cherries for the first time with no damage at all, they are pristine with one spray of only Surround. I also have not noticed any OFM damage to the peaches or damage to the tips. I have been diligent with spraying and need to get out there tonight after all that rain over the weekend.
So far this year has been great for strawberries and I have had my first ever harvest of rhubarb after about 5 years of trying. I am just now starting to get blueberries and Jewel black caps. There is one Tomcot apricot on the tree and I have only a handful of Korean Giant pears and Hosui pears. I think I let them overset last year (it’s so hard to know and not be greedy!) There are only one or two Seckle pears, but they have been ruined the last two years by pear scab so I am interested to see if my new program of lime sulfur has fixed that problem.
The Goldrush tree is loaded and the other apples are numerous. Just have to stick with them and hope the moths don’t invade.
PC scarred 90% of my Asian pears this year but I don’t think any larvae survived.
Same tree has been hit with Cedar Rust and a couple Fireblight tip strikes that I cut out. Looks it’ll soldier through it.
I get black rot if I don’t spray Immunox. Other than that my grapes don’t have any big issues. One spray at bud break and one when grapes are forming often is all you need.
Variety may play a part in that. I’ve got three Concord and some other American variety that I have never sprayed. Other than animals they are pretty trouble free. I don’t have Reliance to speak on though.
Looks like I have to eat that… I spotted my first SLF today. I think it was the second instar. It was on a kiwi and they get no spray so that might be a factor.
I am still doing surprisingly well on OFM, no tip strikes to speak of. This is in spite of skipping the mating disruption this year. I think it all boils down to spray timing for those doing the organic approach. Also I hit them with several things at once: Bt, spinosad, Madex, Grandevo, and Venerate.
My persimmons came though the late freezes nicely. What varieties do you have?
Check my profile. I have them listed. Only Prok and Tipo got mildly nipped on a few branches. It doesn’t seem like it was enough to prevent those 2 from carrying fruit this year.
I know sweet cherries are supposed to be very disease prone in our region, but I think I found some wild growing trees along a hedgerow. The fruit are much smaller than store bought cherries but are firm and sweet. I know I shouldn’t be eating questionable fruit, but they tasted good and I survived. There were maybe 4-5 trees scattered about. Maybe these are naturally disease resistant?
Those really looked like small sweet cherries. Good find. Maybe You can dig them up during dormant and plant them in your yard.
Hello there! I have figs that seem to be ok without winter protection in the western Philly suburbs. Chicago Hardy comes through the winter like a champ, almost no dieback. Celest is second best. What color and shape is your mystery fig from Bronx? If you have a pic I’d like to see if my mystery fig is similar. I have 5-6 different varieties but some I don’t know the cultivars as they are grown from cuttings given to me (should have made labels!)
This is the first year my mystery fig will fruit, so it’s still a mystery! I’ll update with photos once the figs ripen. Right now they are still very green, maybe a little smaller than a golf ball.
I’m also very excited because another user sent me some cuttings of Reservoir and Black Bethlehem figs (thanks Bob Vance!), and I managed to get 4 of the cuttings to leaf out (I thought I had killed them, but they were just taking their time). So hopefully in another few years I’ll be able to taste more varieties of home-grown figs.
Ok, I’m really feeling defeated on growing plums because of the heavy insect damage I am getting even with spraying.
Here is my spray schedule:
Seems like I messed up the timing on my last two sprays because I started noticing the crescent egg laying then. I’m also not sure if I stopped spraying too early.
I’m also not doing any spraying specifically for OFM because it seems like I only get minor shoot tip damage on the stonefruit - is this a mistake?
Can anyone share their spray schedule that works? I would be okay even with 50% losses - all my plums this year had PC larva inside them.
Hey Dimitri,
Larva inside every fruit is totally frustrating. Do you clean up the fallen fruit so those Larva don’t get you next year?
I spray Surround, Cease, sulfur, and spinosad and BT four or five times. These are all organic, so I can’t attest to the Triazicide or Immunox. I don’t spray at a schedule of every 14 days, rather, spray with the intention of keeping a layer of Surround on the fruit, so I may spray only a few days after the previous spray if it had rained enough to wash off the fruit. I still have PC bites, but those are the fruit I will thin out first.
As per the OFM, the spinosad and BT seem to handle them fine. As far as I can tell, I had no flagging tips and we didn’t find any larva inside peaches or plums. I do make sure to spray the entire canopy while spraying, after taking a more direct route of spraying each fruit.
I don’t say this to rub it in or brag, but as time goes on, the more organic I get and the more I do to bring in more insects and more wild areas (wildflowers, native plants) the better results I get. Maybe it is just more experience on my part, but I have yet to see a Japanese beetle this year, the SWD have only now started to be a problem, which is fine because the blackberries are finishing up, no cabbage moths this year, no cucumber beetles, no squash vine borer damage (using pheromonal trap), no aphid issues this year, no white flies, but plenty of wasps that don’t bother us and plenty of other insects and birds. I haven’t seen brown rot or any rots that ruin a crop other than pear rust, which I did a dormant spray of lime sulfur (seems to have worked, but still time to go wrong).
Hope this helps a little. Happy to expand on anything above.
I’m located North of Lancaster, PA. My fruit growing experiences include Plum, Apple, Pear, Peach, Cherry, and Asian persimmons. I have propagation and fruit breeding experience. Propagation experience in rooting cuttings, as well as budding and grafting. Out of a planting of 200 American persimmons, I have selected and kept a female tree that’s modest in height and is a heavy producer of annual crops. The fruit are oblate and hold onto the tree fairly well.
My greater passion is cold hardy Citrus involving Citrus trifoliata hybrids. Citrus trifoliata is alternately known as Poncirus trifoliata. The species as well as the majority of the hybrid progeny are armed with strong, sharp spines. Trifoliata is nearly inedible, its hybrids generally inherit the off flavors, but there is considerable variation in flavor.
The C. trifoliata species is hardy to -20 deg.F under ideal conditions. The hybrids are reputed to be hardy from 10 deg F to as low as 0 deg F. Out of an original seeding of 20,000 F1 hybrid seedlings approximately a dozen survived with living stems at -12 deg F. at 8 months of age.
At present trials are continuing on further propagated survivors, as well as ascensions from numerous sources. Some of the original survivors have continued to show excellent hardiness, while others have shown various defects.
Hey Dimitri, I have been enjoying handfuls of delicious plums every day, and made one change this season that’s paying dividends for me: swap out Triazicide for the new Sevin formula in the red bottle (found in Lowes or Walmart). Amazingly, I had no worms at all. In the past, some of my fruit would get PC crescents, but not this year. I only sprayed 3 or 4 times this year to get these results.
