Plum Curculio

I have a Shiro and with its lower fruit set the plums where 2-3x as big and they defiantly taste diffrent from each other.

You have to stay positive

Did you get an answer on this? I’m wondering something similar

Apples will suffer from June drop no matter what. PC usually get crushed in most apples and only cause scaring. PC over winter under leaves up to 1/4 miles away so trying to kill them in the soil around the tree is not useless but only part of the battle. You can rescue infected fruit and kill the newly implanted larva with neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are of course highly toxic to bees and everything and persist far longer then manufactures will admit to.

PC’s are not difficult to kill you can do so with many less then extremely toxic pesticides its challenge is timing when there most active as many of these are contact killers and break down quickly.

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I definitely see new curc bites on my prune plums. Always lots of drops this time of year

you live close to me. i’d like to compare our shiro fruits some year. sounds like mine are very different from yours. mine is from stark bros. where is yours from and does it ripen early july?

Here is my Shiro, picked today.

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Nice. What is the good looking peaches(can’t tell they are fuzzy or not)? Are they taste good?

It is Eastern Glo nectarine. It is a combo of acid and sweetness like 60+40. Brix is between 13-16. The 16 brix is very good and more balanced. People to prefer more acid, not just sweetness in their fruit would like this one.

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Thanks!
Youre in central MA, I’m in central NJ. Your fruits are pretty ripe. I picked mine I guess about a week before that. And about a month ago. Sounds about right. Size and looks seem like my shiro. I still have some in my fridge. I’ll try to get a photo

When I had Shiro, the birds always got them

My Shiro have been in long bread bag sleeves. Birds also do not bother my yellow plums. Anything red is another story,

@GardenHope - most of my Shiro are not fully ripe. I only picked a dozen that were darker yellow. Most are pale yellow with some green tint to them

I distribute Kootenay Covers in the United States. You can get an idea of what the covers are and how they work at our website: FruitTreeCovers.com. The covers are very effective against codling moth, OFM and cherry fruit flies. I would like to test them against Plum Curculio this year. I do not have PC in my state as far as I can determine. If you would like to try these covers against PC this year, please contact me by email at support@fruittreecovers.com or contact me through my website. I would appreciate your help.

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If I invented a tool that would let 2 people install one of these covers easily. Could you sell it for me?

edit:
PC walk up the trunk and unless the bag closing is very secure they will be able to get though if there determined enough. Prehaps you could create a ring you can install around the trunk to make securing the bag and providing a tight seal.

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I asked this question in the other PC Questions and tips thread but didn’t get a response.
Since they do crawl up the trunk, is it useful to employ Tanglefoot on a wrapped area of trunk?

From what I understand is they do have wings but they don’t fly to fruit they walk.

According to some studies they mostly walk below 70 degrees and mostly fly at higher temperature.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226487467_Movement_of_plum_curculio_adults_toward_host_trees_and_traps_Flight_versus_walking

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Olpea, I bought a jug of Actara but I’m confused about the dilution rate. I read the label and i get the ounces per acre and total ounces per year, (I’m not in NY State which has more restrictive rates) but it doesn’t give you the dilution rate. It takes me 10 gallons of whatever to cover spray my entire orchard (50x150) How would I calculate the maximum ounces of Actara per year per gallon? label states 16.5
ounces per year per acre, for me give or take 4 ounces per year

Hi Tuff,

You must be spraying pome fruits. Stone fruits have a max annual rate of 11oz./acre/year. For pome fruits the max. rate is 5.5 ounces per acre per application. So the label allows three applications at the max rate for pome fruits.

There are several ways to figure your mix. It looks like your orchard is 7500 sq/ft. That equates to about 0.1721 acres (7500/43560). You are using 10 gal to cover 0.1721 acres. That equates to about 58 gal. of spray mix per acre. So at the max rate you could mix actara at a rate of 0.0948 ounces of actara per gallon of water (5.5oz./58 gal. of water per acre).

If you don’t have a scale, it can be tough. Without a scale, I would probably figure about 2 teaspoons of actara per gallon of water. Actara is about 1/2 as dense as water. So one teaspoon of water weighs 0.083. So a couple teaspoons of Actara is about the closest you’ll get to a good label rate.

In terms of the amount of Actara per year per gallon, actually that question is a bit confusing. The reason is that there is no max annual mix rate per gallon per year, because to figure a max rate per gallon per year would include all three sprays in one super concentrated spray.

In other words, lets assume you are using an insecticide which has a labeled rate of one ounce per gallon of water per application. Lets further assume the insecticide is labeled for 10 sprays or, 10 ounces per acre per year. If we tried to come up with a maximum ounces of the pesticide per year per gallon, it would be 10 ounces per gallon, I suppose. But it would be a violation for anyone to spray 10 ounces per gallon of the supposed insecticide.

So it’s best just to figure your individual rate per application. Once you’ve figured that number, it’s a calculation to figure how many applications the label allows.

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Olpea, Thanks for the reply and the math

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