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  • From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Cherry Insects
  • Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 16:03:23 -0700

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





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