I’ve been gardening for a while growing vegetables and greens. But, I am new to growing fruit and berry trees and still learning. Our climate here in zone 8b in PNW (portland metro) is wet and harbors multiple fungal/bacterial diseases.
I grow most of my vegetables organically and avoid using chemical agents to control diseases in my veggies. I have tried few approaches to keep soil health and disease pressure low in my raised beds and containers. I have used compost teas, off the shelf microbial products, mycorrhizae innoculants, kelp extract etc. I can’t tell which one works better or do they even work. But, I have had good results with vegetable yields with a just a few
Plants.
I have used the following products.
Real growers recharge - works well for example I was able to regrow a patch of grass decimated by my dogs pee.
Impello bioscience tribus. This is my goto product for weekly watering during the growing season.
Innocur garden solution (old formulation) works well but expensive. And now they have reformulated for American market removing a bunch of bacterial species.
Serenade ASO - This one is a big disappoint for claiming broad specturm fungicide/bactericide. I haven’t seen results controlling any of the fungal diseases. But, I have an big jar of this expensive stuff I am hesitant to throw away.
Montrey garden friendly fungicide. - Excellent results controlling number of wilt, and other infections. This year alone, it helped to stop verticillium wilt that was devastating my egg plant seedlings.
Root shield plus. - started using it this year as a proactive innoculant. I can’t tell if it works or not. But, my seed potatoes innoculated with rootshiwlf and started in cups had grown amazing roots.
EM1 - didnt notice any results.
I want to know if any of these products help or benefit fruit trees or is there any other fruit tree specific agents that I can use.
which lists a bunch of things I use. Some things which I think work pretty well include Regalia and sulphur. Serenade I also don’t think super highly of and I no longer use it. For my climate I eventually gave up on completely organic and use synthetics. It is much hotter in Maryland compared to Portland and things are much worse for diseases.
Note that for fruits I would say bugs are a much bigger problem than diseases.
Thanks, I have heard about regalia and it’s sister product grand evo. Normally, I don’t spray my veggies only soil/root drench except BT sprays for brassicas. Do fruit trees respond well to spray vs soil drench?
I’ve also read about holistic orchard spray which includes neem, lactic acid bacteria and was thinking about trying it.
Regarding Serenade. I’ve compared with Monterey garden fungicide both use a variant of bacillus closely related. However, Serenade is 1.3% active ingredient while Monterey is 98%. I can’t help but to suspect Bayer wants people to use copious amounts of their product which is good for business.
You can’t do much with soil drench on fruit trees in my experience. I tried various things and nothing made much difference. All I do now is put some organic fertilizer on once a year. In general fruit trees are a very different game than veggies. I don’t do anything with my veggies other than plant and fertilize and they do well enough (I don’t grow anything that gets diseases badly). With fruits if you do nothing in many cases you will get nothing, mainly due to bugs and animal pests.
Re: holistic orchard, I tried some of those things and at least in my climate they didn’t do much so I don’t use any of that now.
So far marigolds in the tomato bed to deter bugs and thyme under pommagranite for black spot have been good. I’m trying mint under my citrus in case HLB hits in hopes the antibacterial properties of the oil will help. I’ll also do thyme with my rasberry attempt.
For the folks that want to try natural biological methods… this is a pretty good regimen. Personally i put enough poison in my body from foods i buy… my personal choice to not buy poison or kill things that could be natural predators.
