North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[lovehd@comcast.net (Hal Love)]

I also have zero yellow jackets this year. Normally, the peaches and pears are swarming with them by now. I think it had something to do with the total lack of fruit last year due to the Easter freeze, followed by the exceptional drought. It not only seems to have wiped out the yellow jackets, but also the squirrels, which are totally absent this year. There also were no honeybees this spring, but they did return by early summer. You would think that no squirrels would be a good thing, but I have lost most of the branches on my peach tree from too much fruit. The tree is huge, and there is no way I can reach most of the fruit to thin it. The squirrels normally get most of them, but without the squirrels and the huge crop after no crop last year, it was more than the branches could take. I have noticed lots of broken peach tree branches all around the area.

 

Hal

TN

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Dianne Stephany" <iluvdanc@rochester.rr.com>

 

Hi!

I just picked about 2 bushell of nice, red juicy Star Fire peaches today.  They are delicious.

 

I noted a couple of things while I was picking-- NO YELLOW JACKETS. I did not see ONE. Amazing! No holes in the peaches swarming with yellow jackets- or in any of the apples, or any other fruit for that matter. I wonder if the skunks got so hungry last year during the drought that they ate all the colonies?

 

Another thing I noted was that even with rain every day for weeks at a time I only found 3 peaches with a brown rot- probably peach leaf curl which they had before and looked like it.  I treated the tree once in the late spring with Soap Shield (a copper based fungicide) and once with Serenade (B. subtilis) both from Gardens ALive. I could only treat with serenade once due to all the rain we have been having.   I know from previous years that one spray would not stop peach leaf curl with so much rain, but my 2 peach trees look great and the fruit is not moldy.  So I think the Soap Shield worked great.  I will even follow directions this year and spray in the late fall as well.

 

Our Simka plum tree has a gazillion fruit but I am losing a lot due to mold from all the rain. I am thinking that I could try the Soap Shield on it this fall and next spring....I don't think that the Serenade would do much good this late. I think the plums have about another week to go till ripe. 

 

OH, and I need to make a correction to an earlier post I made. My neighbor had told me his ornamental plum had plum pox.  Recently plum pox has been found in 2 counties in NY and orchards have been quaranteened. Now I know that we do not have plum pox. His tree has black knot and feeds a gazzillion plum curculio beetles. The black knot has spread to my Simka. I keep cutting it out. Any thing else I can do ?

 

 

 

Thanks for any advice,

Dianne Stephany in Rochester NY, zone 5-- where we are expecting a 3 day dry spell.

--- Begin Message ---

• From: "Dianne Stephany" <iluvdanc@rochester.rr.com>
• To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
• Subject: [NAFEX] peach leaf curl, yellow jackets, plums w/mold
• Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:28:24 +0000

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