Sounds like a nightmare. Is the fruit (flavor) worth it? Nothing a chainsaw and a woodchipper can't fix :)

Maybe you ought to give some organic solutions a try. I realize you are a Synthetic chemicals purist, but these synthetics aren't the solution for everything. When it comes to brown rot, my experience is that the chemical sprays are worthless. And we get lots of brown rot here, it's one of the biggest fungal predator on fruit trees in our area. I've gotten better success with serenade and sulfur sprays.

Axel, have you ever tried Indar? Can you find a single study that indicates your mentioned products are even remotely as affective as it? I put Serenade in my organic program and got absolutely no control with it of scab or CAR even though it's been relatively dry here in the northeast.

I've managed sites that never harvested stone fruit after July and put a single Indar spray down a month before ripening time of earlier peaches (earliest don't rot anyway so get no spray) and turned the whole situation around with a single spray.

The salesman of Serenade don't put as much faith in it as you seem to.

Olpea, that's just very weird. I've arrested brown rot in it's tracks with Indar when half a plum crop was already rotten. I think your commercial growing neighbors may be providing you with resistant BR. Either that, or you may just have a variety that's only suitable for western conditions, you know, like the Santa Cruz foothills.

While I am a Serenade user I tend to agree with harvestman that it is pretty low on the effectiveness list for many things. Still, if you use it with every single spray the effect can add up. I agree it does pretty much nothing for scab and CAR; this spring I tried to go the extra mile on Serenade on the apples and CAR seems about as bad as usual.

olpea, thats too bad about your Sugar Pearls. Mine has several years to go before fruiting. I had to move it this year since it was too crowded in its old spot.

Hey my Jerseycot finally is ripening and I owe you a report on that. About a third of the fruit cracked and several were rotting, but they are not tasting mealy at all. In fact they are quite juicy for an apricot. So your mealiness must have come from your conditions this year. Overall I am not too excited with all the cracking and rotting. The flavor was good but not nearly as intense as Tomcot. Tomcot is still the gold standard, it is head and shoulders above the rest of 'em at this point.

Scott

Axel,

I agree w/ Hman, although I didn't mean to start an organic vs. synthetic debate, the universities research this stuff pretty intensely. They rate the organic compounds right along with synthetic, and rate them according to effectiveness on university trial plots, as well as field observations. In every case synthetic wins hands down. I suppose this is what one might expect since synthetics offer a broader range of chemicals, and methodology to control pests affecting agriculture.

And no, I'm not a synthetic purist. I'll be glad to use a plant derived crop protectant, if it is shown to be as effective as synthetics in pest control. And I don't believe one is automatically safer than another. Each has to be evaluated on its own merits.

Hman,

It is weird. I've never tried to spray something daily to protect a crop. In this case I used in one weeks time (in no particular order):

1 spray of Captan
2 sprays of Bumper (SI)
2 sprays of Elevate (new unique chemistry (FRAC 17) unlikely for BR to have developed res.)
1 spray of Pristine (Stroby)

Again it rained every day. We had slightly over 12" of rain in an eight day period. We had 5 days of continuous rain, sometimes raining twice a day. When it wasn't raining, humidity was way up there. I'm sure this weighed heavily in favor of BR. In a low humid/low rainfall year this cot may not have had any problems. But for a year like we've had, it appears this cot had no resistance to BR whatever. I will say that daily spraying did seem to help, as, when I quit spraying, BR went from a problem to an explosion.

Frank rose a good point. Sugar Pearl is a very fine tasting cot, and worth it if one can ripen it. Sweet and juicy. It's also highly perfumed.

Scott, I'll look forward to your full report on Jerseycot, and any other apricots you're growing.

Yeah, I think we regulars here have pretty well hashed out our differences as far as organic vs synthetic but Axel's statement suggesting that you might get better results going organic galled me a bit. Brown rot is a glaring achilles heal as far as organic fruit production IMO.

Olpea, I can't help but wonder if Indar may be a bit more affective than your bumper. For stopping infections already occurring I would assume that one or the other would be your only hope in that situation. I believe that Indar has tested more affective than Orbit- at least according to Indar ads.

Sorry, I haven't memorized the chemical names of these products. For anyone reading this not understanding Bumper is the generic version of Orbit.

Harvestman, I would not go as far as to call brown rot an "achilles heel" of organic methods - I have been able to control it reasonably well in the past two years by putting saf-t-side oil plus Serenade into every tank I spray on the peaches. I also am aggressive about picking off any rotting fruits, combined with heavy summer pruning and summer shoot thinning to keep the light coming in. Saf-T-Side is an emulsion, its thick like soft butter. It was rated as effective as Captan against brown rot in studies. I doubt it would work with only a couple sprays a season like Orbit lets you do, but with the extra work it should let you harvest a crop. Or so it has been for me thus far.

Scott

Scott, I meant in terms of commercial production. You have me very interested in this Saf-T-Side you've been endorsing. Like to see those studies and also what's a good source for purchasing it. If you were able to do a reasonable job of controlling BR last year and you had a season there anything like we had here it must be quite affective.

As for my own orchard, I don't consider Captan anywhere near affective enough for low spray BR control as you know. But I am trying to make my synthephobic customers happy so I need an alternative to Indar.

http://www.uckac.edu/plantpath/Fugicide-Efficacy/IPMFungicide%20tables%202-19-08.pdf

Scott, I found it myself. I'll be giving Saf-T-Side a try. 7 Springs sells it.

I'm glad I didn't get back to this thread yet, you found a more complete table than the one I had found earlier. I think the "++" is pretty accurate in terms of what I have seen, it is not a silver bullet but with regular sprays its a help. Serenade only gets a +/- which is pretty low. The reason why I keep spraying it is that it has some effect on just about every disease. Sulphur is the one other thing I am using; supposedly sulphur at 4-6 weeks after bloom is very effective against peach scab. I tried that the first time this year. For the early cots that was too late, some Tomcots are covered. I'll know in a few weeks on the peaches. The sulphur stays around quite awhile if it is sprayed with Surround, I can still smell it weeks later and after several rains. I was concerned about putting oil on when there was still some sulphur but doing the oil a week after the sulphur produced no leaf damage.

I also get my Saf-T-Side from 7 springs (as well as my Surround and Serenade), Ron is very reliable and has good prices.

Scott

I think those of us on the more "organic" "natural" side of things tend to side with them because they tend to break down quicker, but i agree that both are/can be toxic.

I do wonder how they did it before synthetics were developed?

I don't know bout brown rot but there's an awful lot of copper arsenate contamination around here at old orchard sites.

On thing that bothers me about that chart is it was comprised in the west coast where results aren't always duplicate of east.

Hman, I share your concern about E vs W coast on the Saf-T-Side. Only with more experience will the full picture be known.

Frank, here is what peaches of new york has to say on brown rot circa 1917: Brown-rot (Sclerotinia fructigena (Persoon) Schroeter), known also as fruit-mold and ripe-rot, attacks flowers and shoots of the peach, but is most conspicuous on the ripe or ripening fruits. Here its presence is quickly detected by a dark discoloration of the skin which is afterwards partly or wholly covered with pustule-like aggregations of gray spores. The decayed fruits fall to the ground or more often hang to the tree, becoming shriveled mummies, each mummy being a storehouse of fungus threads and spores from which infestation spreads to the next crop. The rot spreads with surprising rapidity on the fruits in warm, damp weather either before the fruit is picked or in baskets while being shipped or stored.
Preventive remedies have so far met with but indifferent success; probably the best method of control is to destroy the mummy-like fruits and all other sources of infection either by picking them from the trees, or much better by plowing them under deeply. Even so it is impossible to exterminate all of the countless myriads of brown-rot spores. Spraying with the self-boiled lime-sulphur mixture three times at intervals of three weeks, beginning as the calyxes drop, is the appointed preventive but the results are uncertain, as this is one of the diseases in which it is difficult to touch the spot in spraying. Varieties of peaches show various degrees of susceptibility to brown-rot.

In other words it sounds like they suffered a lot. The fact that they still write a whole book on peach growing means they must have managed to avoid it a good chunk of the time.

Scott

It is also easiest to control when trees are young. There is a great range of pressure from site to site even beyond the obvious issues like good eastern exposure and breezy conditions. Maybe it's the combination of factors from cultivar susceptibility to relative amount of dew at a site, etc. that makes it hard to figure why it is so much harder to control at one place than another.

Have any of you noticed a relationship between the sweetness of a peach and its suseptibilty to BR. I used to have a tree that was less sweet and it wasn't bothered by BR while some others were.

No relationship to sweetness, but definately to relative water content of fruit. Of course earliest peaches less susceptible, but also some of the old varieties like Elberta and Belle of Georgia.

I am really surprised these things don't work on the East coast. I had a big scab breakout and a couple of Serenade sprays wiped out the infection. I use the powdered form, and it leaves a white film on the tree. It's quite effective for me on scab and brown rot.I use about double the recommended concentration.

I tried a synthetic chemical fungicide, I'll have to go back and look what's in it, but it was completely ineffective for me.

Between sulfur sprays and serenade, I am pretty happy with the results in my garden. it seems to be enough for our West coast dry climate conditions. I suspect in the East, you might need a chemical that hangs around for a longer period of time and provides some sort of protection.

I have had an issue with powdery mildew, there the organic stuff isn't working. What's the best synthetic you'd recommend?

Axel, just check the chart at the site I mentioned, it rates most of the available fungicides for mildew control and it was compiled by UC Davis, so it's west coast based. Of course Sacramento aint the Santa Cruz hills.

Axel, for powdery mildew there are many good organic options. The organic grape industry in California solves their powdery problem almost completely with Stylet oil.

Scott

Re: Peaches and BR. I've had very few problems with peaches contracting BR. The earliest ripening peach here (PF1) ripens around the 1st of July. By that time the rains have slowed down and BR is easy to control.

However, Frank's question had me wondering if older hierloom varieties weren't a little more resistant to BR.

With that thought in mind, this year Indian Free is fruiting for me for the first time. I've noticed the little fruitlets have a lot more fuzz than newer peach varieties. Generally, for peach breeders, it's considered a desirable trait to have less fuzz, so there is some selection pressure that way. I wonder, if in the process, today's more modern varieties are more susc. to rot because they don't have as much fuzz. That thick coat of hair helps keep the dew off the skin.

Scott, you grow a lot of those old peaches. What say you?

Olpea, fuzz is a good theory but doesn't explain the resistance I've noticed in Elberta, which isn't particularly fuzzy, but Belle of Georgia does fall in that category.

Elberta's resistance in no way invalidates your suggested connection, just suggests that there may also be other factors- possibly water content % as I already suggested. Nectarines high susceptability to rot strongly enforces your theory.

Olpea, some of the old ones are indeed resistant, but its not fuzz per se. In fact, Indian Free is one of my most sensitive peaches when it comes to brown rot -- two years ago I lost the whole crop. Indian Cling, a very different peach, hardly ever rots even though it has less fuzz. If you look at Peaches of NY you will see they mention for many varieties that they are either resistant or susceptible, so it clearly was a factor in variety selection.

Scott

Well, it was just a thought. As Hman suggests, I'm sure there are a lot of factors involved in BR resistance other than fuzz.