North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Sarah Kehler Ewing <skkewing@yahoo.com>]

I have no experience with 'Ethryl", but I'm experimenting on copper sprays in 
fall helping with hardening off/winter hardiness.  

It is apparently very well researched in this area for strawberries and 
raspberries in Europe (according to Dr. Evans).  I also learned last fall 
from my local potato farmer friends that spraying with copper is also popular 
among organic potato farmers to hasten hardening off of the potato skins 
prior to harvest; for their non-organic potatoes, the normal routine is to 
spray kill the plants with herbicides for the same reason.

After learning all this, I realized that I have had significantly more winter 
kill in the last 3 years than I had in the 3 prior years.  Although winter 
damage wasn't worse the one year we hit -47C/-52.6F than it was the year 
prior and the year after.  And one big difference I came up with was that I 
used to spray spring and fall with copper sulfate following my organic 
orchardist father-in-law's recommendations before I learned that we just 
don't have the disease pressure up here where its cold and stopped spraying 
for anything like the rest of the growers up here.  So starting last year, 
I'm again spraying copper sulfate in the fall and will re-evaluate this 
theory in a few years.

Sarah 
zone 3
Edmonton, AB


--- On Mon, 3/28/11, R F Hollaus <hollaus@comcast.net> wrote:

> From: R F Hollaus <hollaus@comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] suitable rootstock for zone 4 peaches?
> To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Received: Monday, March 28, 2011, 6:53 AM
> Anybody heard of the spray brand
> product "ethryl"? 
> Another trade name appears to be "ethrel". Pete of Prarie
> Perfect 
> orchards has used this after his cherry crop is finished to
> increase 
> the hardiness in his orchard. It should work on peaches
> since they 
> are (according to him) spraying cherries and peaches in BC
> Okanogan 
> district. In this case the product is registered for
> advancing fruit 
> maturity to hit the market window but at least we know it
> works on 
> peach trees to the extent it advances ripening. 
> 
> Therefore Last Question:
> Anybody heard of it used to gain hardiness in peaches?
> 
> Rupert. 
> 
> 
> On 27/03/2011 10:58 PM, Mark and Alisha Fehringer wrote:
> > The question was asked about using Prunus americana,
> native 
> >native plum roots 5-6 years ago with mixed
> results.  Each year they 
> >put on a nice growth of 2-4'.  The grafts seem
> plenty strong as they 
> >hold up against our high winds.  However they
> probably have had at 
> >least 90% dieback each winter.  Last summer I
> mounded some earth up 
> >around them to try to get the peach to self-root and
> they appear to 
> >have overwintered very well this time, but of course
> I'm not sure 
> >there's a connection.  I was going to remove them
> this spring if they 
> >had severe dieback, but it looks like they might be
> pardoned another 
> >year.
> >
> > Mark
> > Northeast Colorado
> > zone 4 and windy
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