North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Cherry Insects

Has anyone tried netting dwarf trees?  What results have you had?  Some of the newer dwarf stocks should make it possible to use spun bonded type fabric to net a whole tree.
-Lon Rombough
> From: Don Yellman <dyellman@earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 15:39:10 -0400
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [NAFEX] Cherry Insects

> Charles:
>
> I live where insects were invented, from whence they subsequently spread 
> to the rest of the world, but I have virtually no insect problems on 
> sour cherries, and I have grown Northstar, and am currently growing 
> Meteor and Montmorency.  Together with Asian pears, it is one of the 
> fruits I really don't have to spray at all.
>
> The single insect that can trouble my sour cherries is the cherry fruit 
> fly, which shows up as a small, white larvae, usually found when pitting 
> the fruit.  This is a single-generation insect with quite a simple 
> lifestyle.  It hatches out in damaged cherries left on the tree, drops 
> to the ground with the cherries, and burrows into the soil beneath the 
> trees to pupate.  I nearly always hoe around under the cherry trees once 
> or twice in spring, perhaps not all the way out to the drip line but at 
> least until I get tired.  A small motorized tiller would do an even 
> better job.  This disturbs the pupae, exposes them to drying, and 
> greatly reduces the hatch.  They do not burrow very deeply, and if you 
> can hoe 2-3 inches you get them.  In recent years, I have been able to 
> nearly eliminate these larvae from the cherries.  The other factor of 
> course is to clean the tree of cherries to the extent possible at 
> picking time, and discard those that are bird damaged far from the tree.
>
> Do you have other insects bothering your cherries?  If so, they are not 
> playing fair.  There should be no need to have to settle for small 
> cherries.  I just planted a Balaton and a Danube this spring, and expect 
> to deal with the cherry fly the same way on these new cultivars.
>
> Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA