I'm curious as to how others have approached figuring tree row volume
for young trees. I'm going to lay out my calculations and would welcome
any comments or suggestions. Might be helpful for anyone else wanting
to figure what exactly to do when it comes to spraying (whatever it is)
on a per tree basis. Winter seems to be a good time for math.
We are entering our 3rd yr and, having not seen much disease or insect
pressure with the small amount of production we had last year, we won't
be going nuts on spraying, but wanted to do some preventative measures
and have some things on hand in case of seeing a problem. Things we're
planning on doing are: dormant copper for some fungal diseases,
micronized sulfur for scab, fish for foliar feeding, a few red ball
traps for apple maggot, and surround for Plum curculio and a the
potential for codling moth. I'm also curious if anyone else has been
faced with a similar situation - new planting, low initial pest/disease
pressure, and beginning a minimal spray program.
As we have a couple hundred 2-3 yr trees on a wide variety of
rootstocks, seems as though figuring the amount needed per tree and then
multiplying that would work well. I've noted a couple sources that
mentioned a rate of 1 gallon per 1000cu.ft of canopy (which would be
somewhere around a full grown semi-dwarf size tree). I could
approximate my tree volume on my 3rd yr trees by multiplying 6x6x6 to
give 96 cu.ft or let's call it 100 to make it simple. so that's 0.1
gal. Since I'm using a backpack sprayer I probably won't be as
efficient as I could be, so I'll add another 25% and call it 0.125 gal
or 1 pint. On 200 trees that would be about 25 gallons.
Then there are the grapes and berries to worry about but I think I'll
just mix an extra 5 gallons or so and see how that does, adjusting if
necessary.