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nafex - [NAFEX] Organic vs Standard Spray Programs

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  • From: Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Organic vs Standard Spray Programs
  • Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:48:08 -0400

The Washington state fruit growers have made organics a big success story: acreage increases every year, and they are getting around double the price for their fruit. I don't think that is going to work for commercial growers in my area (mid-atlantic) for some time however, due to the much greater pest and disease pressure. This also goes with why most of the fruit is now grown in the west: for any growing method you will get more flawless fruit in that climate. Fortunately more and more people in my area are realizing its better to buy the locally grown fruit than to get that 100% organic apple shipped all the way from Washington.

Re: University research, they were doing nothing but poo-pooing the organic movement up until about ten years ago, so its not hard to see why the organic-committed farmers don't trust them. Now the tables have turned and organics are "hot" for both researchers and mainstream growers out west now.

I think the backyard grower nearly anywhere can grow fruit mostly organically without much extra work, as long as they don't mind a few more flaws in their fruit. Recently Don Yellman posted his spray program and I noticed that he was primarily relying on bagging and copper and oil, all organic methods. He was using only Imidan for curculio and Ferbam for CAR. I have found Surround to work well enough on curculio, and my chain saw has been able to relieve the CAR pressure so I am almost completely organic and am not doing things too differently than Don is. My one exception now is I need malathion for the persimmon psylla, nothing else seems to work (this year I am going to try more regular oil sprays, hopefully getting them before the leaves start to curl and it is too late).

Scott




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