Oh no, I feel on the spot. I'm really not very knowledgeable on the precise feeding habits of curculio- I manage too many orchards to rely on careful monitoring. I have noticed that on cooler springs they tend to appear a week or more after last flowering apples have reached petal fall, on warm ones a day or 2 before. Of course this may only have any significance in southeastern NY, if there.

There's a fellow on the NAFEX site, Denis is his first name, who's knowledge of these kinds of splecifics is quite impressive. You might try a post there- I'm pretty sure he'll bite, he's extremely generous.

If you think PC is tough on apples, try growing some European plums.

I've had better luck with Surround and only get partial wash off with an inch of rain- maybe you've been getting some decent wind with that water.

Harvestman,

Thanks, I will put a post on NAFEX and see what I get. We have had pretty continuous soaking rain for a day or so now; possibly I simply had not put enough Surround on the trees. There seems little point putting more on until the rain stops, so my question was really more one of curiosity than anything else -- as regards the apples, I will have to adopt a fatalist attitude for a day or so. Interestingly, I have not seen much curculio damage on my Stanley plum, but this is perhaps because the developing fruit has only just gotten exposed in the last day or so when the remainder of the flower came off (there must be a technical term for this, but I don't know what it is). But boy did they get nailed by oriental fruit moth last year.

Austransplant, I am fighting the same battle now. My trees still do have a little Surround left on them. One thing I have learned to do is to hit the apple clusters at point-blank range and that gets them super-coated and that will let you get through a bit more rain. I waited too long to spray Surround this year with all the rain in the forecast and I have more curc damage than I would like on the early apples; like you my plums are looking pretty good. I made the same mistake last year of starting too late, you think I would learn.

In terms of the activity of the curc, I have not found them as active in the cool wet periods based on my personal observations. But once it dries out and warms up even one day without coverage can do a whole lot of damage.

Scott

For some reason PC doesn't seem to like Stanley as much. Unfortunately neither do I- in that season Castleton is sweeter and better I think.

Scott is right about Surround, he probably has more actual hands on experience with it than I do. I handle the chemicals and have someone else doing the Surround. When I've done the spraying with it I'll come back and do a second coating on the fruit clusters after the first has dried trying to really coat in on.

I have been fighting PC for years and years now in northern MD. We have apples, peaches, plums and cherries. They attack them all...I nearly gave up on them until I found surround. You need to have a multi-attack strategy if you want fruit with PC in the area without using synthetic pesticides.

Spray your trees after bloom falls off with surround at very heavy concentrations along with about 2 to 4 tbsp insecticidal soap. The soap will act as a sticker spreader and the surround will stick much better on the fruit and leaves. This past monsoon we had Most of my surround stayed on the tree foliage and fruit including the waxy plums.

You will get some damage from PC but there is no way around it.

I also put a blanket(s) under each tree and bang the trees with my boot or a board with protection on it so you don't damage the tree. Quickly collect the offenders and send them to a watery grave. I do this two to three times early in the morning or late afternoon (right before dark) and I can collect large numbers of them this way.

All in all the key to get the surround to stick even with heavy rain is the insecticidal soap. I have tried other natural sticker spreaders with not a lot of success. You get the added benefit of killing some of the soft pest insects as well.

Hi Marcus,

I'm glad to hear you're finding the Surround successful. Just a question, then I'll relate my experience since the last posting. The question: the makers of Surround quite emphatically say not to use a sticker; the idea is that without a sticker the particles will come off onto the insects very easily and penetrate their breathing holes etc. So the Surround is not so much to prevent the bugs from laying on the fruit, as to make the fruit a particularly unappealing place to be in the first place. I suspect you have found an alternative mode of action: by adding a sticker you are perhaps effectively creating a physical barrier around the fruit the curcilio cannot penetrate. This probably deserves some experimentation on my part.

Since my last post we have had continual heavy rain here in Maryland. I got a couple of extra applications on, and am now in a position to bag some of the larger apple fruitlets in sandwich bags. There was quite a lot of curculio damage; the buggers even had the temerity to be out in the day in front of my eyes! Two things seem clear: the more applications of Surround you make (even without sticker) the more stays on even in extremely heavy rain. Second, the curculio clearly prefer apples above all else. Very little damage on my sour cherries, nectarines or plums, only the latter two of which have also received Surround. I suspect they will move onto the nectarines now that the dead flowers have fallen away from them. Surround sticks better on apples than on anything else with the exception of peaches -- in other words, the fuzzy surface on the young apples really makes a difference. My plan is to give the apples another round of Surround and then bag the rest, and then to start using Surround plus Spinosad (following Scott Smith's suggestions on an earlier post) on the plums and nectarines, moving on to just Spinosad in June, when I think the curculio risk will have abated but oriental fruit moth start to move in. The pears can fend for themselves. Any comments on this strategy would be much appreciated.

When I first started using surround I had little success getting it to stick to the waxy plums. I talked directly with an engineer at the makers of surround who strongly suggested using a sticker like insecticidal soap. I did it once and it worked. The main idea behind surround is to get a nice coating on the fruit and create a barrier...When the insect does land on it they are agitated in their feet parts and breathing holes and then leave the area.

I have an interesting observation to make about today..Leaving in a few but I will post when I return home later tonight.

My understanding is the insects needed to get the Surround on their bodies so they pause to clean it off. Basically the idea is to force them to spend nearly all their time cleaning themselves. If you glue the Surround to the trees they will just walk over it. I have had very good luck with Surround in past years without any spreader/sticker or any beating the trees. It won't stick to the plums but I coat the path they will need to take to the fruit, and that slows them down enough. This year it has been raining too much and I started spraying too late so I am concerned I will not do nearly as well. I also added some oil a few times and I think that may also not be a good idea.

Scott

Wish my more luscious Euro plums were PC unattractive. They go for them more intensely than apples here. Not so the Jap plums whose earlier development may be helpful.

So my interesting observation.

I have 8 trees:

2 plums, 2 peaches two cherrys and two apples - All dwarf.

Anyway, all of the trees are finished blooming except the one apple which is a golden delicious.

All the trees had one treatment of surround two days ago...The big plum tree had two treatments (one before the rains came because it's fruit were larger and now incidently has more PC damage). Anyway, the smaller plum did not have a treatment this year because it over produced last year and it did not produce fruit this year.

This evening I hit the trees and pulled PC off. The small plum tree with no treatments but also no fruit had 2 PCs that I found on it. The larger pulm tree had about 5 on it. The small peach tree had 2 PC on it, the larger peach tree had none on it. The sour cherry had 2 PC on it. The sweet cherry had 0 PC on it. The apple which had been treated once (winesap) already because the blossoms are off had 5 PC on it. The other apple tree that has not been treated yet because there are still to many blooms on it had 19 PC on it!!!

Incidently, if someone knows how to deal with this one insect that drives me nuts on the apples. IT bores holes in the apples and it seems to ignore the surround. I place a white fly trap in the tree because I used to have an issue with euro saw flies but I think I have really gotten them under control with this trap...I see no damage from them that I can tell...This is something else all together. But I have to thin so much because I have so many apples on these trees anyway.