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Fruit & Orchards

Spraying dormant oil on apple and cherry trees

treebarb Z5 Denver

16 years ago

I planted 3 bareroot apple trees 3-4 years ago, 1 Granny Smith and 2 Golden delicious. 1 Golden is 7ft tall now and the other 2 are about 5 ft tall. Last spring I planted 1 Montmorency cherry and 1 Bing cherry, both about 4 ft tall. The trees flower but haven't produced any fruit yet. I'm a newbie with fruit trees and wanted to know if you could give me some tips on when and how to spray the trees with dormant oil. Do I not need to use dormant oil until they fruit? I'm in Zone 5 in Colorado. We are at least a month away from bud break.

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Comments (4)

scaper_austin
16 years ago
Well, here in Central Texas we like to apply dormant oil on a warm day in February. It is said that this helps with suffocation of things like scale. I'd bet the process is similar in your neck of the woods. I dont know that Colorado has any warm feb. days but maybe you can pick a sunny day with as much warmth as you are likley to get this month and get a good spray on your trees. It sure does seem to help around here.

Hope that helps some,
Scaper
jim123
16 years ago
Dormant oil spray also helps with fire blight in that it helps kill of the bacteria that may be lingering in cracks and crevices. It won't help with fire blight if it strikes during the bloom cycle or later though. The bacteria is spread by insect activity and rain.

But yes, dormant spray would benefit your apple and cherry trees. It is best to do it two or three times during the winter prior to bud break. If it rains within a couple days it doesn't count.
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I guess what I am wondering is if the reason why people are now wanting to spray oil later is that everyone is using light oils and they don't work very well in full dormant periods. So, maybe the heavy oils actually would work well in full dormant, just as well or better as a lighter oil later. I looked around for studies of different kinds of oil compared and could not find anything (well I found one paper stating that heavier oils are more effective but just that sentence). There still is at least one heavier dormant-only oil being sold that is made by PBI Gordon. Hey I just found an interesting old study, see below. It states that heavier oils work better, but it also points out that the rosy apple aphid wakes up later and that is the biggest aphid problem for apples showing the importance of a later spray. On apples the rosy apple aphid is about the only reason why I spray oil so it sounds like I should aim my oil spray at them only, and do the later spray with lighter oil. Harvestman, this may be the reason why you prefer the later spray. This study suggest lime-sulphur later because the light hort oils did not exist when it was written. Overall, it sounds like for scale a heavier oil is better at delayed dormant, and for aphids a light hort oil later is better. Scott Here is a link that might be useful: study
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For apples green tip is considered the latest time. Thats with just a little tip of green showing. I had some of my apples leafed out with about 1" leaves when I sprayed last week and I just went ahead and hit them and they did not mind. Scott
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fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
16 years ago
You only need to spray dormant oil if you have some kind of problem like scale or spider mites. Some of these problems are more likely in a long season area like central TX or CA than in CO. I've grown fruit in west TX for 34 yrs and have never seen the need for dormant oil. I've never had scale. Only had spider mites when I sprayed the wrong codling moth control, Sevin killed the mite predators and caused an outbreak. Chances are high you don't need dormant oil in CO. If you have a problem down the line that dormant oil might help, then spray.

The Fruitnut
treebarb Z5 Denver
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the good info! It's pretty arid here so rain's not an issue, lack of it is, but we do get spider mites. It's supposed to be in the 50's later in the week, so I think I'll spray them. Fruitnut, you may be right, but I'll err on the side of caution and see what happens. Thanks to all for responding!

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