Here in western Montana I spray once or twice with dormant oil and then (this year) four times with Spinosad. I've still had significant, but not devestating, codling moth pressure, and next year I'll be a little more aggressive with the Spinosad, making sure to be a little bit more ahead of the cm maturity curve.

I usually manage to avoid any other sprays, but I have added sulfer to discourage powdery mildew once.

Good luck,

M

Usually, spray only when needed. Bug infestations I'll use liquid seven to spray topically. Japanese beetles are disease carrying culprits. I'll throw down some Milky Spore or beneficial nematodes to take care of the larva in the ground. Spray early morning right around sunrise to avoid over spray and beneficial bugs. Never use systemic insecticides on fruit trees. This is harmful to our immune systems and the beneficial bees. Tree diseases and fungicides, I use a product called "GreenCure". It's totally safe for animals and insects & us. Eco safe too. Wettable sulfur I use sometimes but only to kill aphids, mites and other small beasties. Sulfur is also a micro nutrient that when washed off, goes into the soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Anything !

I sprayed once for CAR and once for Rose Chafer beetles. My apples turned out great and that is because they were all bagged!

Greenpower-

That is why i'm switching from Sevin to a Nicotine spray made from my own garden grown tobacco. I figure it has to be green? :) I wish i could grow something that takes care of cedar apple rust.

I spray lime sulfur once in the Winter, then once more at bud break along with dormant oil.

Then, I spray Serenade on a weekly basis on any tree that is foliated during our rainy season, and a weekly spray during bloom time to prevent the spread of fireblight. If there is a fireblight alert (rain/drizzle with night time temps above 55F during bloom) I will spray additional doses of special sprays such as Blight Ban, which uses a strain of the bacterium, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pf-A506 that prevent the spread of fireblight.

Usually, the last rains are in late March, early April, so only the low chill apples that bloom and foliate in mid January get sprayed often.

I use coddling moth traps for the coddling moths, this isn't completely effective, but it does keep the infection rate below about 20%. I can live with that.

Sevin (carbaryl) kills bugs, but will cause a fair amount of fruit drop if sprayed during the earlier stages of fruiting, and the fruit it drops won't necessarily be the ones you'd choose if you were thinning yourself. It's nonselective, and will kill beneficials as well as pests, which makes it almost useless for control of codling moth in apples and pears, at least in any balanced control attempt. Your early cm sprays would wipe out the bee population pretty fast!

I may be wrong, so please educate me. Does anybody use carbaryl in an integrated pest management program for apples?

Thanks,

Mark

I use Sevin for Japanese beetles only- and then I sometimes get mite flare-ups. Now if the weather lets me I mix hort-oil with the Sevin which seems to help.

Hi keepitlow-
Let's see...
1.) just prior to green tip, a Dormant oil and Kocide3000 for scale and scab/fireblight protection.
2.) 1st spray of Immunox for CAR at petal fall.
3.) 2nd spray of Immunox for CAR 10 days later. This spray will also include an insecticide. Probably Permethrin even though you're not supposed to use it after pedal fall.
4.) Another insecticide spray a bit later to protect the apples until they're thinned/bagged.
Optional 5.) miscelanneous spot sprays from a hand sprayer to control my aphids. I probably get so many because I'm growing the trees pretty hard right now. And, I probably don't need to control them as tight as I do.
Optional 6.) Another Kocide3000 spray as soon as the trees go dormant. I didn't do this last year, and it didn't seem to hurt me. Not positive that I'll do it this year.
Optional 7.) I may do another spray in August of BT to control caterpillar damage.
So, for me, next year will be somewhere between 4-7 sprays (not really including all the spot sprays for my aphids). But, I also bag my apples.
If a grower didn't bag, and they weren't using a heavy hitter insecticide like Imidan, then I could see how you could reach a high number like that. Although I don't have any experience here, and I don't know for sure, I get the impression that commercial orchards are spraying much, much more than this.
Hope this helps...
-Glenn

Commercial growers in the Midwest spray 14-16 sprays for apples.

Agree to be very careful with carbaryl/Sevin on apples. Early this summer, I sprayed peaches and had a very small amount of carbaryl spray left over in the tank. I was using Intrepid for OFM and added a little carbaryl as a kicker against various beetle pests. It wasn't much so, I left it in there and mixed some sprays for apples/pears using just Intrepid and a fungicide. The little carbaryl spray left in the tank was enough to knock almost all the apples off. It doesn't take much. Also, the literature is replete with warnings that carbaryl can cause mite flares.

Greenpower wrote:
"Never use systemic insecticides on fruit trees. This is harmful to our immune systems and the beneficial bees."

Greenpower, nothing could be farther from the truth. Systemic products are considered safer for bees than most broad spectrum insecticides. The benefit of systemics is that the chemical is absorbed fairly quickly in the foliage and thus strongly limits exposure to not only bees, but other beneficials as well. It's only the insects that eat the foliage that are exposed to the chemical. Many systemics are classified as Reduced Risk products by the EPA. Also I continue to see you recommend sulfur as beneficial to the soil. While is can be beneficial, it is one of many micronutrients that are needed by plants. Too much and it can be toxic. Around 5ppm is all that is needed for peaches. Too much and it can also acidify the soil causing problems with uptake of other minerals. Sulfur deficiency is very rare for most fruit trees.

I bet growers around here were at their max spray limit trying to keep up with scab.

I got away with 3 pesticide sprays apples had no worms in them. Scab is another issue. I think I will do 5 sprays next year. Dormant, petal fall and 3 cover sprays.

I didn't spray Sevin until around June 10... Did i cause fruit drop? My fruit were well developed and bagged at this time?

I'm not using it next year, i didn't learn about the fruit thinning effect until AFTER i sprayed...go figure!

Once again...my wife was taking apples off the tree and eating them...that is how good they were...she normal shys away from a lot of stuff i grow :)

I say squirrels are as big of a problem as bugs and disease, at least in my overpopulated squirrel haven.

I would guess around 13 this year.
Could be less because I battled with Cherry Leaf Spot a lot until I gave up and I could be confusing some of the cherry only sprays.
At least the CAR and Scab stopped defoliating and stunting my apples eventually.
CLS totally defoliated one tree and is working on the other.

AM seemed to start earlier and go later but was lighter overall I know I didn't stick to any 7 or 14 day schedule but it seems like I still sprayed a lot.
CM must've been picked up by my early PC sprays of Spectracide because I didn't see any so there's another possibly less reason.

None. Not once. Well, I did do a lime sulfur spray in early spring but that was more for the peach tree and the apple tree only got it because there was spray left. Both my bagged and unbagged apples were perfect. The Japanese beetles didn't even eat them. The bagged apples were a bit more likely to have some damage from the earwigs actually. Next year I'll probably do a 50/50 bagged vs unbagged since it didn't make a difference this year. It might be because this is one of the very few apple trees in the neighborhood.

On most sites I got away with my usual 3-spray in spite of relentless rain. This includes sites with Macintosh and other extreme scab sponges. However out of many sites there were two where Mac had some scab showing 2 weeks after usual final spray.

At one of the sites I came back with some Flint after Nova had failed to seal the deal. I put them both in the mix and the scab dried up without jumping to the fruit.

I'm talking about apples here, not stone fruit.

For this year, one dormant oil spray, and 3 fungicide/insecticide sprays. Captan for fungus; Imidan twice, and once with Sevin to beat the Japanese Beetles. I was fairly satisfied with this spray regimen, except for some PC spots on a few apples because I was a little late with my first spray after petal fall. Also, a couple of trees look like they could have used more spray for scab. Some of my Honeycrisp have the brown rot that Harvestman referenced recently. I hadn't realzed it was prone to that.

Next year I need to be more aware of fireblight during blossom--a couple of pear trees were slightly hit.

This year even my Jonagolds are getting the black rot, if that's what it is. On one site almost all the Honeycrisp were lost to it because I didn't come in with a rescue spray. Stupid of me, but I won't repeat the mistake. I hit my own HC's with Flint when I noticed the problem which seemed to save uninfected fruit. I think I'll just let the Jonagolds fend for themselves. I'm tired of spraying. Hopefully next season won't come with relentless rain and cool weather.

Far too few here... I did copper at silver tip and two agrimycin sprays early, four Surround sprays in curculio season, plus some spotty Serenade/Surround/spinosad sprays with leftover spray from the peaches after that (just focusing on fruits not leaves). Things were great up until July and I didn't pay enough attention after that and everything hit. Usually the early season is the rough time but all the rains of the later summer made things a complete mess. Next year I am going to do several disease sprays throughout the summer on the full canopy, and also do consistent spinosad like I did on the peaches.

Scott

So Scott, what were the issues on what fruit?

I am talking about apples here; I was spending all my energies on my peaches and squirrels and let the apples slide. Here are some problems I had. The CAR spots just kept getting bigger and bigger; fireblight came back in August; I didn't pay enough attention to my disruption lures which ran out of juice and the CM invaded late and ugly; thought I was OK on the sooty blotch/flyspeck but that also came on big time later. On top of all of this I have had far too many apples dropping early this year. I'm thinking its either deer or squirrels but am not sure. I've never had this problem before. Hopefully I figured out the peaches better this year so I can focus on the apples next year.

Scott

I think the sun-starved fruit tends to drop early for lack of adequate energy. I didn't keep up with scab on pears- I actually didn't realize that it can be a season long battle when it's as wet as it was this year. My 2 Boscs are 60% defoliated and dropped pears early though some are still on tree as did Highland which lost most pears too early to be worth anytning. Seckels did the same, but at least they have decent sugar. Bartlett and another unknown Bartlett type, but later, have completely healthy foliage and great fruit. Aurora stayed healthy but fruits not sweet enough.

Most of the Honeycrisp apples, where foliage was fine, dropped a bit before ideal ripeness, or would have if I didn't pick them. Jonagold is thinning itself more than I'd like. All other apples were or are fine. I don't care at all about sooty blotch and fly speck.

Hman I think your right I have 2 macs 1 is in a cluster of trees , 1 on a hill and nothing around. The one in a cluster dropped everything, what a mess a 30' tree dropping bushels of apples wayyy before ripe, also they were tasteless unlike the one on the hill. Im sure the stress of too much water also contributes to the drops to these shaded trees.