Curious, are people in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee still getting Plum Curcilio strikes or has it stopped? I have a seen a handful of strikes this year but nothing like last year (lots of strikes). Thanks, Spud.
I’m in middle TN. I got hit do hard by late frost so I hardly have any fruit but it seems like the PC is over for now. Is there a second generation to come out?
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I had been spraying my Carmine Jewel cherries with Surround to protect from PC, although my spraying was a bit too infrequent to keep them all off. I’m overdue to spray again but may hold off since I don’t see many more strikes at all now. The cherries are starting to ripen so I’d rather not cover them with surround before harvest, so I’m hoping we are in a PC lull between generations. If I can keep the birds off I might get enough for a pie!
I’m north of you in Arlington, VA and earlier they were pretty brutal here, but probably not as bad as last year when I didn’t spray anything and lost it all.
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What is eating my pepper plants? They look a lot like stripped cucumber beetles, but are orange underneath, not black. They attack the tops and put all these little dots on the leafs that then dry out and die. They’re pretty fast and I didn’t get a picture of the actual bugs, but here is some of the damage. Also attacked a basil plant.
I got a picture of one of the little buggers this morning. They’re not really eating there leaves, just sucking them dry in these little circles until the leaves get crispy and die. Any ideas?
Addendum: Well I found the answer. It is the fourlined plant bug, Poecilocapsus lineatus. It doesn’t seem there is a whole lot to do and a lot of the damage is actually from the nymph stages. I’ve lost the growing tops of several of the peppers so I may try some spinosad, but the references I saw seem to indicate their damage happens for a short time while they are active and hopefully the plants will recover. Ugh.
Sure could take that for a cucumber beetle!
Here’s a little info about management for this insect,from Texas A&M.bb
Treatments for fourlined plant bugs include insecticidal soaps, oils or other insecticides labeled for the plant attacked. Soaps and oils will be most effective on the wingless nymphs. Sevin, malathion, and some of the newer pyrethroids, such as cyfluthrin and permethrin, should work well against both nymphs and adults. If a close inspection of the plant reveals no insects, don’t treat.
What’s the best way to give my young trees a high nitrogen fertilizer?
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Granulated urea. The one I use is made by Espoma. You can either mix it in soil or put it in water and let it dissolved and water it in.
Be careful, for young trees, fertilizer can burn their roots and you’d end up killing your trees.
Would you consider using organic fertilizer like Plant Tone or Tree Tone. It’s balanced fertilizer and won’t burn roots.
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How young? Newly planted trees should be on a low nitrogen diet. You should be encouraging root growth.
3 months to 1 year
What kind of trees?
In general, they are young trees. If it were me, I would give it compost instead. They are too young to push nitrogen.
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They are plums, pluots, and Asian pear. Mostly on citation root stock. What is considered high nitrogen? 8, 15, 45?
My 9 year old Colette Pear on unknown standard rootstock (Millers Nursery) is going to bloom this year and I’m wondering if I need to limit it’s fruit production or just let it go? I know thinning will help with fruit size, but is it necessary to limit first year fruit production on these pears on standard rootstock that take a while to bear?
I would say Ammonium nitrate 36 and urea 46 are high.
But again, organic balanced fertilizer would be a good choice to fertilize young trees. Some people don’t fertilize their fruit trees in their first year.
Citation is a dwarf rootsock. Your trees won’t grow that large anyway.
How come I see the DWN videos with the same trees I have about two to three times the size of my trees?
I look at mine and I keep thinking I’m doing something wrong.
Where are you located? CA?
When I say it’s a dwarf rootstock, it still grows up to 8-12 ft, per UC Davis. This rootstock produce fruit quite early ( in2-3 years). From what I’ve read, in the east coast, peaches on citation have runted out. Some apricots on citation just died.
DWN grows fruit trees for a living. I don’t know if you should compare your trees to their trees. As you know, quality of soil and other factors such as water, sun, a planting location play a role in how well a tree can grow.
If you want to push your young trees’s growth with fertilizer high in nitrogen, please feel free to do so. You can consider it as your experimental project. Best of luck.
Tree’s in DWN videos have not been dug up, root and branch trimmed, stored in cold storage and shipped across the country. It’s not fair to even count the first year in the ground after we get them as the first leaf honestly. Your trees need higher Phosphorus and Potassium (the last two numbers in NPK fertalizers) at the moment for stronger root development.
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When building crazy ideas out of PVC(40) what is the longest span one can use for 1/2" pipe if you want it to bear the load of vines etc.
PC is mostly over here in Maryland … once fruits are larger the curc loses interest. The only exception in my orchard is Euro plums which get late neck bites. I gave my Euros one last Surround yesterday.
I have been much better than usual about picking up fallen fruit, hopefully that will reduce my curc population next year. One of my apricot stands got a ton of curc damage, I think because there were too many dropped fruits in that area last year.
Re: curc generations, there supposedly is another generation but I rarely see signs of it so I never figured out what’s going on there.
This time of year is the first point I can relax a bit, the curc is pretty much done and I don’t have squirrels stealing apricots yet. The main focus in this interim period for me is OFM/CM, I am hitting all the apples and peach tips with oil/Bt/spinosad combo to set back the first brood of OFM/CM. So far I have seen only 3-4 OFM tip strikes total and zero CM.