North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Thanks Mark for explaining for me.  Yeah, my low spray approach is to use highest legal rate as few times as possible.  I was surprised how affective Indar was in terms of actually removing brown rot from a site altogether with a single application. 

 

This is not a scientifically proven fact but I've had sites where brown rot was destroying the stone fruit crop every year and I tried a single early July spray (almost a month before Redhaven ripens in southern NY) and the problem disappeared.  Other sites, especially for Euro plums, a couple more sprays are sometimes necessary, but I never have to spray stone fruit any closer than a month from harvest for anything, any year, except cherries.  In home orchard situations, the only way to find out how few sprays you can succeed with is to experiment downward.

 

The Kiwi I mentioned was almost certainly Rosanna.  Some of the fruit is only blushed but some turns completely purple when fully ripe.  If it is a variety that comes from Italy, I feel 100% sure.  Of the 7 or 8 varieties I've tried it is the clear winner here.