Alan describes it best. I mean having fruit not drop off the tree after it has been hit by PC if you spray soon enough after noticing the marks.
It’s true that I have been using this ‘curative’ feature of acetimiprid and imidacloprid to limit the number of sprays I do. I only spray when the PC have hit (they always hit nearly every fruit at once when they show up). So I haven’t been doing preventative sprays.
So I would love a safer (to the environment ) alternative to neonics that can do the same thing if there is one.
If not, I’ll change my strategy if it’s safer to wildlife.
The best thing to do if you want to protect wildlife, although new research indicates it may be problematic for bees, is just to go with the Surround. You can spray the trees when they are almost but not quite washed up flower-wise without too much fear of hurting the bees (although this may change).
And if you really love wildlife, try to have no more than 2 children- the main problem is a loss of habitat. Growing food on your own land conserves land as wilderness that would otherwise be used to grow that food.
Last year I got nectarines at one site with an organic program besides a single fungicide (Indar) spray. It was about the wettest growing season I’ve ever experienced but Surround only needed reapplying after wash off one time. It takes a lot of rain to rinse it off.
Just bought permethrin to give it a go finally. Fantasia nectarines almost petal drop. The plan is to spray it just around the fruitlets maybe a couple of times until they’re large enough to put a bag on with less chance of breakage in the process. that might take a couple of weeks. Then no more sprays. Maybe spray around the entrance to the bags Midsummer or something.
First time using this pesticide, so hope it works.