Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] Too late to start spraying apples?

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: mauch1@aol.com
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Too late to start spraying apples?
  • Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 14:31:12 -0400

I'd say the following:
 
Plum curculio is basically done, but there are multiple stages more of Coddling Moth and Oriental Fruit Moth.  Since you appear to still have some undamaged apples, I'd do the following (I'm assuming you're aiming for home use, where surface damage can be cut off, etc.).  If you're trying to aim for marketable fresh fruit, there's a larger group of pests that cause economic damage):
 
1) Pull off some of the damaged fruit and dissect it.  See what you find inside.  You may want a magnifying glass for at this point some of the pests will be small. 
2) I'd go with Lucky's recommendation of bagging the good apples.  I'd also thin off all the bad apples and each 'keeper' have about 6+ inches apart (slight under width of outstretched fingers).  You may want to dissect some of the 'good' apples to make sure they're good before you go to all this effort
3) There are some minor pests & diseases of apples that can do some damage to your leaves so you might want to consider a spray.  (I've noticed that unsprayed apple leaves look quite bad by the end of the season while some spray can keep the leaves (and ultimately the tree) in better condition.  But if you're trying to go low spray this is the point you could 'theoretically' coast to the end of the season.  Since you haven't sprayed earlier in the season you probably have large residual populations of pests.
 
You can check out the following:
This is the Extension agencies monitoring of 6 pests in Biglerville which can give you some idea how the pests vary over the season (and years).  Note the links to the Tree Fruit Production Guide which can give you a
description of the pests.  It also has links to disease information.
 
For next year you might want to choose Tom Vorbeck's low spray program at applesource:
Personally I usually only get on spray's 3 & 4, with sometimes another cover spray.
 
Information on Apple bagging (there's been more stuff on the Nafex listserve):
 
Good luck!
 
Chris Mauchline
SE PA, zone 6
40° 5' N 75° 51'W
~650 ft elevation



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page