North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

I'd like to hear from some more from growers around the country about what is the day spread from earliest to latest blooming apple cultivars.  In the southeastern NY vicinity I'd estimate the difference to be about 5 days.  I wait until the latest varieties of apples have dropped their petals before making my first Imidan application on anything, including the earliest Japanese plums.  I do a follow up 10 to 14 days later on plums, pears, apricots, peaches, apples etc. and I'm done with insecticide for the season.  This has given me adequate protection from plum curculio and c-moth for many years on scores of sites. 

 

If we experienced the kind of spread of bloom I'm hearing about further south, pest control would be a lot more complicated as you'd have to do at least twice the applications.  Maybe that's what encourages more generations of certain pests in any given season further south where the banquet goes on so much longer.