Have anyone ever tried Pageant Intrinsic fungicide? It has the exact same ingredient as Pristine. They sell 1 lb bottle for about $100 vs Pristine’s 7 lbs at almost $400. However, it’s not labeled for bearing fruit trees. The label lists non-bearing almond, apple, apricot, and for commercial vegetable production such as tomato. Should I go ahead and give it a try for my fruit trees? What could possibly be different vs Pristine? Is it the “other ingredients?” I want to use it especially for my apples that have rot problems since last year. It’s like brown round rot. I thought they were stung by yellow jackets but I am not sure anymore. They also get pretty bad flyspeck and sooty blotch.
If it’s not labelled for bearing fruit trees it’s not legal to use it on bearing fruit trees. If you’re using it on fruit that you will only consume yourself it’s is unlikely that enforcement action will be taken against you. If you are offering any of this fruit for sale that’s a problem and legal action would be taken against you if your caught.
There are a couple of options if you’re having rot problems on apples. Which would work best will depend on how many trees you have ( and their size), the cultivars and what the rot is if you can identify it. Pictures of the trees, leaves and rotting apples help us a lot in figuring out what would be the best course of action for you. Also what spray schedule are you currently using for the trees?
These fruits are mostly for myself, some are given away to friends. I only have 6 apple trees, planted in 2013. Overall I have about 30 fruit trees of different varieties. Actually I have more but the rests are chestnut, persimmon and pawpaws that are very young. I’ll take pic of the rot later. They are on my weekend house. I sprayed them following Schlabach book and Scott’s low impact spray. For apple, this season during dormant I used SuffOil-X. And then Manzate, followed by Immunox during bloom, and then at the end of May I used Assail mixed with Avaunt mixed with either Indar or Manzate (I am not sure). But last week I found this rot on these young apples. My cherries came up beautifully. No rot at all this year. I usually got a bit rot on peaches but not bad since I used Indar.
For Summer rots there are a couple of different solutions-
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Plant cultivars that are resistant to Summer rots then you don’t have to spray for them. This is the best solution in areas that have high Summer rot pressure. Generally, the farther South you are the more rot problems you will face.
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Spray for Summer rots. To do this you will need to do more sprays that extend farther into Summer. You may also need to tighten up the spray interval.
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You can bag the apples. Ideally, you would bag the apples with ziploc bags a couple of days after a fungicide spray.
This thread gives two lists of apples with their resistance to Summer rots. One list is from a book and the other was provided by Scott and is based on his experiences. The first post in the thread has links that will help you identify the various rots you may have on your apples.
I am able to control flyspeck and sooty blotch with bagging. You maybe able to do so as well. Although some people on the forum haven’t had good luck with bagging. Here is a study of bagging of apples.
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Where are you in zone 6? Apple rot tends to be a warmer zone issue. Some apple varieties are more prone to rot than others.
What variety you have that has rot issue?
I don’t know if you see this Penn State article.
The article does recommend Pristine. The product on the market that is available for backyard growers and contains the same two fungicides as Pristine is called Bonide Fruit Tree Spray and Plant Guard (be careful to read the ingredients as Bonide has a few products with very similar name). It is listed for fruit trees. It also has insecticide, Lambda cyhalothrin, in addition to the fungicides.
Do not use the product not listed for fruit trees. Please read labels carefully and follow the labels. Most chemicals limit how many times you can spray them in a growing season.
Please make sure you know the Pre-Harvest Interval (PHI) of that product and do not harvest fruit to eat before those many days.
Good luck.
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I am in the Pocono mountain, about 2 hours north from Philadelphia. It’s definitely cooler than Philly - I used to live there- by about 10-15 degree.
I just read the article you gave me link to. Earlier I read the links given by mroot. I never realized there were different kinds of apple rots. I never made time to do research I guess. Thank you for all of those links.
I am still not sure which rots that my apples have. It’s definitely brown color with ring. I’ll observe carefully this weekend.
The variety is Honeycrisp, Macintosh, Rising sun Fuji, Goldrush, Golden Delicious, and a franken apple. The franken apple was Pristine but I always got ugly looking apples so I butchered it and grafted 6 different varieties 2 years ago.
Only Honeycrisp and Macintosh need to be thinned this year and that’s how I noticed the rot. Fuji and Goldrush give me barely enough apples this year, but from last year experience they suffered rot, too. The Golden Delicious is actually newly planted this year replacing matured but dwarf Golden Delicious that fell over last year. Last year the rot affected nearby asian pears, too. All of them are semi-dwarf except dwarf Honeycrisp.
I probably have to buy Pristine?! I don’t really want to spend the money but maybe I will?? Earlier I read here https://extension.wvu.edu/files/d/7630f5af-2f89-489d-a411-fc5410982ced/black-rot-disease-in-apples.pdf that Captan could help. I never really used Captan. Probably 7 years ago I used Bonide Captan, but not recently.
Please post pics. You have used some powerful fungicide already. Let’s see what really bothered your apples.
Unfortunately I don’t have pic of the rot right now but I will take pic and upload this Sunday. These are the pictures from last fall of just the trees.
The square in the middle with flowers is vegetable garden. The orchard is on the far left. And then there is another strip of trees behind the shed on the far right. I know these pictures don’t help
, I will upload more this weekend.
The “Do My Own” folks took the safe route when asked a similar question:
My assumption would be that “other ingredients” on a product label can’t be anything important/dangerous/powerful otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to characterize them simply as “other”. I’d be interested to know more about that though, what the product labeling rules allow for “other”. For a liquid {whatever}-icide for instance I’ve always assumed it’s probably just water.
If Company A’s label claims active ingredient “Chemical X” will kill [Brown/Blue/Red Rot]. And Company B’s label says {Exact same active ingredient at same %} will kill [Blue/Red Rot]. That doesn’t mean B’s product won’t also kill brown rot… I suspect it just means Company B didn’t pay $BIG to have a lab test their product against that specific pest and issue a report on it’s effectiveness. Probably because of $BIG expense and the hoped for returns.
I think you have GLS that turned into bitter rot on fruit.
You can just read the last few paragraph of this article below re.treatment. You already have Mancozeb. You need to add Captan. At least, these are a less expensive approach than Pristine, considering you have not many trees.
I also think you may need to spray more often and at the right time.
Captan needs acidified water to be effective. People add a tbsp of vinegar per gallon of water in the mixture.
I would second trying Captan. I think the main issue is you need to do more sprays into the Summer and maybe reduce the spray interval. Captan is pretty commonly used by commercial growers to control Summer rots, flyspeck and sooty blotch. You can buy it from Schlabach’s in small quantities (1lb) for the Captan 50% and Captan 80% comes in 6lb bags for larger growers. The 6lb bags are about $50. It’s also available from other suppliers at similar prices.
With Captan you need to make sure the spray water is acidic. At a pH of 8 half the Captan is destroyed in 10 minutes. A pH of 5 is ideal with 5-7 being ok if your going to spray right after you mix the Captan into the water. You can use vinegar or citric acid to lower the pH. I use citric acid which is found with canning supplies in retail stores. I use a 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid in 2 gallons of spray water. The amount needed will vary with the pH of your tap water. For more info on spray water pH take a look at this-
First Enterprise apple - #25 by mroot
As far as Pageant Intrinsic being the same as Pristine there is no way for the average consumer to tell this. To tell this for sure you would need a lot of technical information which probably isn’t readily available and a technical background that allows you to interpret that information.
To give an example, some time ago I worked for a chemical company that made Hydrochloric acid and fumed silica. There were two grades of acid- steel grade and food grade. Steel grade had more metals and higher sulfites so you wouldn’t want to use it to adjust the pH of food products. On the other hand for the fumed silica the standard grade and pharmaceutical grade were the same. The only difference is pharmaceutical grade required more testing and record keeping.
It’s also common in the chemical industry to have lower grade materials with more impurities. Or a formulation accept products with more impurities if it’s intended with industrial use rather than food use. It is quite possible that Pageant Intrinsic is a product that was developed simply as a way to dispose of off quality Pristine that can’t be sold for use on fruits due to impurities being too high. As a consumer you have no way to tell. So I think it would be wise not to use Pageant Intrinsic on fruit even if you are ok with over looking the legal issues.
I have ordered a 8 oz Southern Ag Captan 50WP from Amazon that will arrive tomorrow. I’ll use that first. Meantime I’ll place order on Schlabach. It’s 80WP 6.25 for $49. I wasn’t nowhere near Schlabach catalog earlier. Plus it will take at least a week or two for it to be delivered. I have looked around before I placed that small order from Amazon. About 2 months ago I placed order for 6.25 lb Captan 80WP at Martin’s Produce Supplies but they ended up refunding my money because it was never back in stock. I hope Schlabach has it.
So I guess I will not purchase Pageant Intrinsic and just wait until I feel like I am willing to spend the money for Pristine I’ll see first how Captan works this year to stop the damage.
Keystone Pest Solutions is another good cimpany to buy chemicals. Since you are in PA and Penn State extension services are very good, it won’t hurt to give it a call. Maybe, they can tell you exactly what and when to spray for bitter rot, how often, etc. Good luck.
Sounds like a good plan. I will caution you that once rots are established they are hard to control. You may have limited success this year. Next year you will know in advance what you are up against and will be better able to keep ahead of them.
I know the discussion is pretty much and no matter what kind of rot it is, the control is pretty much the same and I’m going to spray Captan today, but I am finally at the orchard and took pictures and here it is. Not bad, actually. These 5 were all the rotten apples I could find so far. It’s all from Macintosh. I didn’t really see any from other trees but I also thinned heavily last week.
