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