Well, this is certainly a question I never thought I’d be asking, but it has rained here every day except 2 over the last two months. Sometimes just a drizzle, but there were some serious downpours too. Needless to say it has made spraying anything difficult, and the little I was able to spray (some liquid copper and strep for FB) probably did not stick around all that long. The weather is drying out some (hey it was sunny yesterday before the rain), but it looks like this fairly wet weather pattern will continue.
So my question is, what if anything can one do in these circumstances. Short of re-spraying every day (when I can) are there stickers which will cause the chemicals to remain on the trees longer? Does anyone know if Serenade or other pro-biotic sprays will attach themselves in 1 days time?
My primary concern is fire blight, which is present in a few spots; but I have not cut it out yet as everything I read says don’t prune out FB unless you expect 2 days without rain. At some point however I may have to just prune and take my chances unless this weather breaks.
If you live near a large city, find your local John Deere Landscape Solutions store and ask for a gal of sticker/spreader. Set you back about 30-35 bucks. This stuff won’t wash off any painted surface so be careful. It will last on plants till they grow out of it. Use about a 1/10 oz /gal. Works with any spray.
Thanks Chikn. I’m not near to any JD Landscape Solutions place (the not so local JD dealer only sells tractors and implements). But that sort of spreader sticker sounds like a great idea. The question is what other s-s might give similar results to the JD product?
I did some research on s-s, and it seems there are quite a few that are sold at the garden center level (Hi-yeild, Bonide etc all have ones). No luck in finding the active ingredients in the JD product, but I am guessing they buy someone else’s product and relabel it. And there was a thread some years ago between @alan and @scottfsmith on the old forum about Tactic and some other s-s.
Anyone have any suggestions as to which of the garden center available s-s would be the best to use, or what the active ingredients in the JD product are? Is Tactic sold at garden centers under some other name?
It depends what you are spraying. Many chemicals penetrate the fruit a bit so they work fine in rainy weather. If you are using sulphur, lime-sulphur is penetrating so can be good in rainy weather. Also you can use a sticker with regular sulphur to get it to stay on through mild rains. Copper also “sticks” well with a sticker. In terms of whats a good sticker, nufilm has pine tar in it, any pine-based product is good. Tactic is commercial only (I looked into buying it and its expensive so am going to use up my gallon of nufilm first).
I have also had lots of rain lately. I put down some Serenade a few days ago and its probably all gone now. But at least it had a period of activity to reduce the bad guys population. My main concern at this point is brown rot, and I am using propiconazole which should be effective even with rain. I also need to keep up the Surround for the stinkbugs and Japanese beetles, fortunately I still have some of that left from the last spray in spite of the rain. But I will need another spray in the not too distant future I expect.