I had peaches the year before and lots last year… So either this year or next I may be in for it 
least I know where to come for advice 
Well I was out in the garage and saw my spray… I don’t guess I was organic as I thought 
I may have been thinking of this spray, I have used it to deter deer from eating so much and it seems to bother them enough to leave the smaller trees alone. Well so far anyways…
I use that Hot Pepper Spray. It is just cayenne pepper spray. Pretty organic I would think.
The hot pepper spray, yes but the other isn’t. The other one is what I use for my schelduled sprays.
It’s still fairly mild. Pyrethrin is pretty lethal to insects, but it has a very short half life.
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Piperonyl butoxide however lasts 4 weeks or so
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Isn’t the piperonyl butoxide what they call a “sticker” compound, that is, something that extends the effectiveness of the insecticide?
Its actually a labeled pesticide and yes needs to be paired with another pesticide, the residual of the spray breaks down very fast in sunlight (UV and Ozone) similar to pyrethrin but unlike pyrethrin stays in the fruit and anywhere else the plant brings sap for up to 4 weeks in certain applications.
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Piperonyl butoxide is not a labeled pesticide. It’s not a pesticide all. It’s a synergist which inhibits insects from breaking down insecticides.
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Hi,
I was reading about your use of wood chips on your peaches. Have you had problems with voles? I used wood chips around my trees years ago but the voles multiplied like crazy under the mulch and destroyed several of my trees. Our cats and dogs enjoyed hunting them but they didn’t put a dent in the population. I put rat poison in their tunnels, pulled the mulch back to the edge of the drip line and didn’t have any more problems. I quit using wood chips and only mulch with compost or well aged manure around the drip line of younger trees.
I also live in vole country. Other folks have mentioned they’ve had problems with woodchips and voles, but I’ve had less problem using wood chips vs. bare ground.
In my experience, with a good pack of wood chips (not a light dusting of wood chips) it discourages voles. It’s hard for them to maintain door openings to their tunnels. It’s easy to burrow in, but the openings collapse. Additionally runs are hard to maintain. They can still tunnel underground of course, but their runs and openings are more difficult for them to maintain.
Wood chips don’t eliminate them here, but do discourage them here. I have more problems with voles on rows which have no wood chips, or a light coat of wood chips vs. rows which are mulched heavily with wood chips. I also use poison to control voles.
One other observation I’ve made is that vole numbers are somewhat cyclical. Some years (like this year) there are virtually no voles (I didn’t put out any poison this year.) Other years they are everywhere.
Good weed control also helps a lot.
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I believe we are talking about two different species of voles. I have problems with woodland voles that rarely make above ground runs as meadow voles do. Both species are common in South Carolina. Woodland voles will even travel in ‘mole’ tunnels. My property is surrounded by woods so I can never eliminate them, only control them.
I’ve also noticed they’re cyclical. The worst year I had was the second year after I mulched with wood chips. Since my orchard is my yard, they were drawn like a magnet to the mulch under my trees. Their breathing holes were usually around the outer perimeter of the mulch.
Now, when I plant new trees I dig a trench around the tree about a foot or so deep and about a foot out from the trunk. I fill the trench with gravel and the voles have yet to burrow through it. They may feed on the outer roots but the gravel seems to prevent them from getting to the crown. I maintain bare soil out to the edge of the drip line as well.
Yes, I have some horror stories regarding voles, especially before I even knew what they were. LOL I had planted a row of tomatoes that began fairly close to the woodline. I started noticing missing tomato plants shortly after I set them out. After a week or so about 15 of my 40 or so plants were gone without even a nub at ground level. I replanted in the skips and the next morning many of those were gone. As I was standing there looking in disbelief I saw a tomato plant slowly disappearing into the soil. They had a tunnel and burrow complex set up under my tomato row. I found my missing plants in the tunnel system where they seemed to be stored. One chamber had three plants in it, chewed up of course. That same year they got into a row of peanuts. They also built a tunnel complex under the row but didn’t bother the plants, which were lush and beautiful. They ate all the peanuts from underneath. It was a 100 foot row and I didn’t get a single peanut. I deep till the woodline border of my vegetable garden weekly and it seems to keep them at bay.
Both meadow and pine voles will have some above ground runs. We have both, but I’ve mostly had to deal with pine voles, which have their nests below ground. They will tunnel out the terraces my trees sit on like swiss cheese.
Your experience is somewhat similar to what some others have reported. I don’t exactly know why wood chip mulch repels them in my orchard. Perhaps since I’m really not drawing them in from surrounding woods, they try to nest in the most comfortable places (non mulched terraces). Or perhaps the mulching of wood chips cover such a large area around the trees, that discourages them. I don’t know for sure.
Some people here have mentioned good success with snap traps baited close to entrances and covered with a box (with a rock on top). I have too many, so poison bait is very effective for me. I use a zinc phosphide bait most of the time, as it’s the most effective against pine voles. It is restricted use however. As you are probably aware, there are non-restricted use poison baits labeled for voles.
For insect pressure, spraying, effective organic methods, etc. I like Michael Phillips’ THE HOLISTIC ORCHARD
https://amzn.to/2X2reeL
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I don’t particularly like this book… Michael is more or less clueless on how bad the bug and disease pressure is outside of the northeast and western US. His apple book is very good, he knows his apples and knows a lot about how apples do in other parts of the country. I don’t think he ever grew a peach tree and he doesn’t really understand the ins and outs of peach pests and diseases.
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Hi Friends, from Ithaca, NY
Hopefully you will pardon my butting into your conversation!
While I live at the edge of the peach growing limits, I do have a couple of favorites, especially as regards bacterial spot. CLAYTON is an older NCSU peach, smallish, but resistant to some strains of spot. It is worth searching out and growing.
If one takes peaches as a crop that would need to be replanted every so often, the angst lessens a bit. If one adopts a Y-form where each arm is allowed to fruit, and then removed, while the second arm enters into 2year fruiting wood, one becomes more inured to the concept of having to replace entire trees; at least, that is what I should like to think!
Dwarf peaches in large, 20 gallon squat pots and a friable medium you can compose yourself, can offer another solution. Ison’s sells a couple of varieties, and there are many more for hot, humid areas. The quality of fruit can be very high, depending on how carefully and sensitively you manage the in-pot culture. It is worth a try and you can always move the pot around with effort, and add various aids, like agricultural fabrics, to fiddle with certain parameters.
Regarding blackberry, I have had good experience with Triple Crown. There is need to cotnrol lush growth in ground, and feeding too much. Sweetness depends not just on the genetics but also on controlling the levels of moisture and nutrients the plant wants to suck up in huge gulps!
It is a vining, floricane, thornles variety, quite vigorous. There may be a lot of Japanese beetles coming by initially, but I suspect that the bramble builds up a Systemic Resistance. At least it has for me, and I no longer see more than a beetle or 2 each year. I have no experience with the Arkansas releases, but there are the upright thornless ones, including Primark Freedom.
Have you considered any of the loganberries/boysenberries/marionberries for your growing conditions?
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