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[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

On Mar 4, 2010, at 8:56 AM, Dale Burkholder wrote:

I am getting ready to apply oil spray to my orchard (250 trees) and would like suggestions on what oil to use. I bought some of a Ortho product labeled "Specially formulated for residential use".  Just wondering what that means.  I take it to imply the product is a practically worthless imitation of the real thing, being sold to people that will use it on a few trees, hoping it will help, and never having the slightest idea if it killed any bugs, and the buyers are coming back the next year with their credit cards to try it again. I'm skeptical of many of the products on the market, and worse than skeptical of the big corporations that operate with a completely different level of integrity than small, local, know-your-customer suppliers. Heard too many comments from professional growers about junk products.
Is this stuff worthwhile to use or is there a better way to do this? Either a good cheap homemade product like vegetable oil and Basic H (even if I have to apply it twice) or go buy up a 10-year supply of something expensive that really works - the local Ag. Co-op dosen't have any commercial product. What do you all recommend?

Dale Burkholder
Shenandoah Valley, VA
Zone 6

Some oils are straight horticultural oil, nothing else. Some have other chemicals added to them. If anything's been added, it should say on the label, though you may have to look at the small print. 

It's possible it's "formulated for residential use" mainly in the size of the package and in having rates on the label going on the presumption that you're only mixing up a little at a time.

Is it this?

http://www.scotts.com/smg/catalog/productTemplate.jsp?proId=prod180016

That looks like a fairly standard petroleum based agricultural oil; as it's 97% oil, it doesn't appear to be "watered down" if that's what you're worried about. -- if you're being fussy, you could call and ask them what the "3% other ingredients" are. (Other horticultural oils also generally have a couple of percent "other ingredients", so that isn't necessarily something odd that Ortho is up to.) If you'd rather use a vegetable or fish based oil, there are some on the market; I don't know which type is most effective. I have an old gallon jug of Golden Pest Spray Oil that's 93% soybean oil and 7% "other"; I don't know what the "other" is, but OMRI didn't mind it.

If you're doing 250 trees, I don't think you're going to find that gallon sizes are going to make you a 10-year supply; and gallon sizes are pretty common mail-order.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly

Fresh-market organic produce, small scale