I have a handful of plum trees with a handful of grafts on them. Everything is at about 95% petal fall, except one graft on one tree which is in full bloom.
What’s the best way to deal with this from a 1st spray perspective? I have major PC here which I spray with imidan to keep it in check.
Should I spray everything except the branch in full bloom? Or should I wait until everything is at petal fall and hope the kickback effect of imidan will take care of the inevitable PC onslaught?
Spray the other trees and when you do your next spray, spray the tree with the late blooming graft. Hopefully you will get an idea at the end of the season of the consequences. Usually I just wait for apples to lose their petals before spraying anything and I sometimes suffer some PC damage on my E. plums but not my Js. However, I doubt it is because of a lack of early protection, because the Js flower several days sooner then the Es. E plums are the most attractive common fruit I grow to PC damage, and I suspect the damage I do get is because my 2 insecticide spray program is not perfect at controlling the tail-end of damage.
Take a little risk and learn a lot. Every site is different, even closely located ones.
I know it’s a very basic question, but this is my first year in dealing with such mismatched flowering on the same tree.
I don’t have any E-plums, so my J-plums take all of the PC damage on their own. Some years I get nearly 100% damage, but it ends up being nothing more than the crescent shaped scar.
I have 70 different varieties of stone fruit, as well as pears and apples and they finish blooming over 2 weeks. If you spray with imidan wait until the last stone fruit on the tree is thru blooming, as it has kickback effect, you might get strikes, but imidan will kill the maggots before they do any damage. You can spray the trees which are done blooming at any time after bloom but not the ones in bloom.