The PF-24C Harvest is in Full Swing Now

About 30 healthy leaves with good sunlight exposure for each peach is what you need.

1 Like

@mamuang

Red Baron, Messina ++++

2 Likes

Your spraying schedule is great. Seeing your clean fruit, I am considering changing to your spraying program.

Could you please tell us your spraying program again?

I know this info but somehow, did forget about it during a thinning phase. I Irealzed now that this is probably the cause of my PF 24 C blandnes. My Autum Star is having the same issue.

My younger trees are vigorous and have excellent leavesto fruit ratio. I’ll see how good a small number of Foster and Red Baron peaches will taste.

We are lucky to have dry Summers here in Eastern WA. It doesn’t require much spray. Fruits are 100% clean. Most between 3.0"and 3.5".

I’ve had a three year running battle with Oriental Fruit Moth. This year however, none. :smiley: I’m not 100% sure why. My plan was to hit them early and hard this year, so I sprayed with spinosad right before bud break (first time ever using it). Once bloom was over, I was going to start with insecticides but noticed my trees had an unusually large infestation of ladybugs. I just couldn’t bring myself to spray them.

I added O’Henry and Indian Free a few years ago. They are much more disease prone. Powdery mildew is pretty bad on Indian Free and it wants to migrate to my other trees. With O’Henry it is shot-hole fungus with some pressure on the rest of the trees. If it weren’t for those, I would only spray copper in Spring and Fall. As it is, I am using Bonide Orchard Spray (Sulfer and Pyrethrins) mainly because it says I can harvest one day after spraying (although I don’t spray within a month of harvest), and it is really the fungus I need to control. I waited too long to spray this year due to the ladybugs and Indian Free got hit pretty hard.

Early Redhaven, Redhaven, and PF-24C are pretty low maintenace compared to Indian Free and O’Henry. To be fare, Indian Free gets the least sun on my lot and PF-24C gets the most.

2 Likes

That’s a plan? I’m sorry, but just because a substance is organic your approach does not follow IPM protocol, where you generally identify a pest in the orchard before spraying.

OFM doesn’t even require careful monitoring the way I see it. Keep your eyes open for the first signs of flagging and spray then- I think that is probably adequate.

Their are ecological consequences to the use of all agricultural poisons, although in the small scale of a home orchard we aren’t talking about truly crucial ones.

1 Like

I agree with @alan. OFM’s activity on a tree does not start before bud break. Spraying it then does not help with OFM issue particularly Spinosad’s efficacy lasts only about a week. You are very fortunate to live in an area with low pest and low disease pressure comparing to the east coast.

I sprayed Spinosad, BT and Surround weekly right at shuck split for several weeks before bagging. I still see a lot of bug damage.

1 Like

Some of my PF 24C picked today. Mine were bagged since they were a thumb size, about 3 months. They don’t color up like those exposed to sun. They still have traces of Surround clay.

8 Likes

i don’t remember. i saw it on a canadian nursery website awhile back. if i can find it, ill post on here.

1 Like

Ha ha, I agree! Certainly not claiming to have a great plan. Just pointing out for Bob that I can grow really clean peaches in this climate without having to spray much at all. The story is anecdotal in that I only sprayed once, very early and held off on everything else for a long time.

To be honest, by the time I realized I had an OFM problem a few years ago, they were fairly well established. At first, the flagging branch tips made me think the trees weren’t getting enough water. After a little investigation, I realized that I had a problem. Ironically, I had a Redhaven tree for 15 years at another location in town and never sprayed for anything but leaf curl. When I moved to the new location, I decided to abandon my cherries, apples, and pears in favor of focusing on peaches. This was mainly for two reasons, I can’t purchase a good peach in the store and everything else required much more spray (I know how crazy that sounds, especially if you live in the East).

Even with my recent experience with OFM and the addition of some less disease resistant varieties, this climate makes things so much easier than what everybody back East has to deal with. I am very thankful.

2 Likes

hudar z2, luscious z3, cabot vermont z3, nova z3, patten z3,south worth z3, and summer crisp z3. from fedco website. some are from Canada and some from the good ol’ US of A! :wink:

1 Like

Moose, those are pears, not peaches. I have Luscious and Summercrisp.

2 Likes

oops. my bad!