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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Surround speculation this spring

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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Surround speculation this spring
  • Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:30:36 -0500

Donna writes:
I am surprised that you say the main curculio season is over for
you, I had to look see where you are. Probably a little behind us in
the season. As I understand it, the infested fruit that is falling
here now will produce a new crop of adults to go hit the late peaches.
I have never noticed any significant late curculio damage myself, and
would also be curious if others have seen such damage in peaches. I
may have gotten some and had assumed it was moths without looking too
carefully.
Scott

I went home and looked in my Garden Bug Book, and turns out that there is a dividing line between those who have only one generation of plum curculio and those a bit further south who have to deal with two generations per year. Scott in Delaware is above it. Since the line mentioned is over in Virginia, I don't know where I am this side of the mtns, but I can guess. I ask myself, what is the worst possible answer, and that's it.
Speculation aside, my experience this year so far is interesting and possibly useful. I have an early peach with large propped grafts of a couple of AU plums on it. The peach is early, a seedling of something that blooms a bit too early for here but the mild spring allowed a heavy set this year. The plums have been ripening for 2 weeks and the peaches are just now getting ripe. It has been obvious all along that the curculio prefer the plums to the peaches. I wonder if given a choice in a peach orchard of a Japanese plum tree to work on, if spraying the hell out of the plum would give pretty decent protection to the peaches. I wonder if you had something really effective but really expensive and organically approved, if it would be affordable to protect the peaches that way. Or something cheap, like a chicken pen under the plum, and you tapped the plum tree religiously twice a day. Bored, penned chickens who've already scratched up the ground and eaten everything interesting are REALLY fast learners if you offer them the same kind of bug every day. Curculio may look an awful like a bit of debris, but if I can tell the difference, a chicken can too.
I've thought that the curculio didn't care for the fuzzy skins of the peaches, but I could be wrong. What if the plums just got going sooner and plumped up faster (they did that) so that made them more tempting? Or maybe it was because the plum has better leaf coverage than the peach side of the tree, and they like to be hidden? If a person were north of the two generation line and had really late peaches, the peaches might not get a lot of hits anyway if early plums were preferred. Any comments? Donna




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