I have still not found a single curc bite and have not done a single spray this year besides the dormant ones… plus probably no problems for the next week as the temps will not be warm enough to wake up the curc. Very odd.
@Ahmad in looking at my cots it looks like some of the white cots got blossom blight, none of the others did though. I included a rot preventative in my delayed dormant spray. I should not have thinned my Tomcot so early as the freeze got most of the fruits. The ones with a fruit above them are OK and if I had not thinned I would have had a full load. The set is pretty low on most of the other cots, looking below thinning levels now.
South of you PC is out early this year. It has been difficult to control because of the rain. Not getting a huge amounts of bites but every tree is getting some. What I am unsure of is since the PC were out earlier does this mean that they will go away earlier? I like to spray as little as possible. Last year I sprayed for about a month, maybe 5 weeks.
Their lifecycle is roughly based on degree days so if things are evenly shifted they will both start and end sooner. But since the weather is colder now, fewer degree days are accumulated per day so they may stay around longer this year.
I am going to have to go look for bites one more time, it seems like I should have gotten a couple by now at least given how you guys are getting them.
Ok I finally found a few today… it makes sense as I am just a bit behind the folks in Virginia. I am actually a bit relieved to see them, no more mystery.
I am not sure when I will start spraying, the weather is cold for the next week and it is also going to rain a bunch. It might be next Sunday as we are forecast for about an inch of rain total before then. But if I see more bites I will do a spray anyway. So far I found two crescents on apricots and two on plums.
I have some approaching dime size. The bites were on large-pea sized plums and apricots more pea-sized. It sounds like I am a week or two behind Virginia and you are a week or two behind me…
Hmm, I should probably go refresh the Surround coat tonight. I haven’t seen any more damage on casual inspection and I laid the initial sprays quite heavily, but it’s going to rain a lot more in the next 4 days or so and I’m kind of paranoid.
Same here. Everything has been stagnant as I’ve been getting hit with 35°F nights (actually measured at 25°F) every other day. Tonight’s supposed to be 33°F do hopefully things start plumping up after this - 8-14 day forecast predicts abnormal lows so well see…
I was looking around for data on what temps the curculio really gets going in… many places say “70s” without any clear reference to highs or lows, and the curc is mainly active at night so it is more the evening/night temps that matter. But on the U KY site I found something interesting, they said the curc is active when the nighttime low is above 60F. I think this is a really good number to keep in mind as it correlates with my memories of curc activity in past years. So far we have had none of that, and also almost no curc activity (I have found no more new bites since the couple I found a few days ago).
So, the cool weather has had a positive effect on PC pressure this year (as long as people didn’t lose their crop altogether.) We are not supposed to have night time lows above 60 any time with in the next 10 days.
This year I started getting PC strikes before I did my first insecticide spray. I have peaches in 3 different areas - at my house and two different spots on my fathers farm. At the house I used Permthrin and at one spot on the farm I used Permethrin. The other spot I used Imidan. The spot where I used Imidan got hit a lot harder than the spots with Permethrin. I do not know if it is because Permethrin is better with PC or if Permethrin lasts longer when it rains - we had a lot of rain this year (as much as 5 inches in one day). Or maybe the one area that got hit harder had more PC in that area. I am starting to believe Permethrin is the way to go for the home fruit grower (peaches only) for PC control.
Thanks, Scott!
That’s very good info. I will watch for the warm nights with temp > 60F in the next few weeks. I sprayed Permethrin on 4/6. But after that, the weather has been cool. Only saw a few nights with 50+F. I haven’t sprayed another Permethrin yet because I haven’t seen any damages yet.
Prior year I sprayed every 7 to 10 days based off rain - 10 days no rain, less than 10 if it rains. I think I sprayed 4 times last year, may have been 3. This year I sprayed 4 times in less than three weeks because of all the rain. I hope I am done, its supposed to pour the rain tonight …