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  • From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
  • To: NAFEX List <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Spraying pears
  • Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 09:20:18 -0500

When thinning fruit the other day, I noticed a lot of brown spots on the leaves of my New Century (Shinseiki?) Asian Pear. But there were no spots at all on the leaves of my Starking Hardy Giant (Olympic?) Asian Pear standing right next to it, although there were a few on the Hosui on the other side of my yard. Note also that the New Century is a very small tree, with lots of space around it (so far), and that it's been very, very dry here this year (on the other hand, I've run a sprinkler on my strawberries a couple of times, and the tree has gotten wet from that). I imagine that it's some kind of fungal disease?

I assume that I need to spray a fungicide, but I've had trouble finding one for pears. I have never used a dormant spray on pears (I use dormant oil with lime sulfur on many other trees), because I've read that dormant sprays weren't necessary for pears. The Captan I find here - alone or in combination sprays - isn't registered for pears. Immunox can't be used on pears, apparently, nor Chlorothalonil, in the formulations I've found (and since I read that it's been implicated in honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder, I haven't wanted to spray it during the growing season). I found some Mancozeb, but it's not rated for any fruit at all, except grapes. And a lot of other things can't be used once leaves open, it seems.

One fungicide I've heard is rated for pears is Ferbam, but that's one of the many chemicals I can't find anywhere around here. Maybe it's not rated for residential use?

Any suggestions? Maybe this won't be a huge problem, anyway, but this tree isn't overly vigorous (one year after planting, we had that hard April, 2007, freeze that nearly killed it - I was shocked when it finally started leafing out again). Should I just do a dormant spray with lime sulfur next spring?

Frankly, I have a hard time finding sprays of any kind that I can use on a variety of fruit trees. And I suspect that I've got worms in the Asian pears already (mostly, this is because I've got strawberries around them, so I can't spray while they're blooming). Oh, well, I'm still very much a newbie at this, and I'll get it figured out eventually.

Thanks,

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use being anything else. - Winston Churchill




  • [NAFEX] Spraying pears, William C. Garthright, 05/30/2009

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