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Fruit & Orchards

my nectarine spray schedule please comment

12 years ago

Ok,

I have a couple of young nectarine trees in my dallas backyard that look like they may produce for the first time. I know I will need to spray for plum cuc. and ofm. I plan to spray every ten days with spectracide once and done upon the reading I have done on this forum. In fact I have already done 1 spray as the bloom is well underway and petals are starting to fall. 2 questions remain 1) do I need to rotate anything else in with the spectracide to avoid resistance bulid up? 2) do I need to reapply after heavy rainfall? Any other advice is welcome as it has been awhile since I have fooled with stone fruit.

Thanks,

Scape

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Comments (4)

olpea
12 years ago
"In fact I have already done 1 spray as the bloom is well underway and petals are starting to fall."

Scape,

If you sprayed spectracide during bloom, you'll not want to do that. There really aren't any major insect pests that attack blooms on peaches/nects., plus the insecticide will kill bees.

Complete petal fall is the earliest you'd want to apply spectracide for plum curc.

This year I plan to wait till shucks off for my first insecticide spray. If I get plum curc damage before then, I'll thin it off.

About 1" of rain will wash off lethal residues of your spectracide.

I doubt you'd see any resistance buildup with a few trees.
scaper_austin
Original Author
12 years ago
Thank you. Well the good news is that we got a ton of rain( over an inch) 2 days after I sprayed so maybe no harm no foul. I'll wait till shuck split for spraying. With more trees is it likely I would need to rotate in another chemical?

Thanks,
Scape
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olpea
12 years ago
"With more trees is it likely I would need to rotate in another chemical?"

Scape,

I doubt with any backyard orchard (regardless of size) you'd see resistance buildup. I think if that were a significant risk it would be reflected on the labeling like it is on commercial products (commercial pesticides generally have a section on resistance management).

Resistance buildup is a problem in commercial production. Off the top of my head fungicides like Topsin M, Strobe's, SI's, and insecticides like Guthion, Imidan, pyrethroids, etc. have all had issues with pest resistance. Even the herbicide "Roundup" has developed resistance issues.

Backyard production is a completely different dynamic than commercial. The sheer numbers of food and pests make pest resistance a concern in commercial, whereas the small number of food and pests in a backyard make resistance a statistical impossibility.

Think of it this way. If you were to buy a Powerball ticket every drawing for the rest of your life, you might buy a couple thousand tickets in your life, and you will never win the Powerball. Powerball jackpot odds are one chance in 175 million (about equivalent to the odds of getting pregnant - if you're a man). If, however, you were a multi-millionaire and bought 100 million Powerball tickets, you'd have a decent shot at winning the jackpot.

In the same way, there are very slim odds (millions to one) a given pest (say a coddling moth) will hatch with some natural resistance mechanism to a given pesticide. If however, there is a large ongoing population of the pest in a commercial setting, the odds are much greater that farmer will come across an individual of that pest that has natural resistance to the pesticide being used. In that case, the pesticide will put selection pressure on the resistant pest by way of killing all the non-resistant population, leaving only resistant individuals.

It's simply a function of numbers. The backyard orchardist will never win the "Powerball" as applied to insect resistance because he/she doesn't have the volume, whereas a farmer with 100's or 1000's of acres of production might develop insect resistance. It's for that reason farmers are strongly advised to use pesticide rotation and other resistance strategies to counter that risk.
scaper_austin
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks again. Very reassuring yet sad about the bad odds of me winning the powerball!

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