Glib, I read that part and was not sure what beneficials he was talking about. There are a few kinds of wasps that both feed on flowers and kill bugs, that is the only example I could think of and they are not very common where I am. So, I am somewhat skeptical on that with the information he gives. One of the reasons why I found this page to begin with is I was looking for how to deal with a long rainy period like I am in right now. You are supposed to spray sulphur before the rain and lime-sulphur after, but if you have an inch of rain followed by 3-4 days of off and on rain then putting sulphur down at the start is not very helpful as it will all wash off in the big rain. Just doing lime-sulphur at the end is going to be too late, it only has kickback for a day or two. I was looking to see if I could put sulphur powder and lime-sulphur in the same spray, and this guy was the one hit I found on that -- he believes you can get both forward and backward protection with a combo spray like that. I just did my first test of that spray yesterday evening, will have to see how it works. We are in the peach scab interval so that is mainly what I am going after with the sulphur. Another good idea he has for his large orchard is to only target the most infested places, using monitoring traps all over to see which blocks are worst. I only have two separated blocks, the front and back orchards, but I have found it handy to view them as different as far as sprays go. My back orchard has had horrible brown rot so last night I hit every inch of the Euro plums with the spray since they have been the biggest rot problem by far; in the front I just hit the fruits since there is little or no rot problem there. For him he shows how the cost savings is large, he saved $15K on chemicals alone, not to mention the time saved from all those unneeded sprays. Many home orchards are all in one spot, but it plantings have 50' or more between them this strategy can be used. Scott

I've created this type of soil in my yard after having added tons of Peat soil, manure especially. I have apple trees, and also plant tomatoes in this soil. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, it was the apple trees first year in this soil(trees were 2yr mm106) the two honeycrisp apples on one fruit tree for MM106 remained green till mid september. I will not be adding any more OM into the soil and leave it forever till it wears out. The tomatoes this year were not all that tasty either. Too much of a good thing with OM.

In the past few years, there have been many ideas coming forward that contradict our 'known' values. A famous one is that fat in the diet is bad for you. That theory has perhaps helped to cause our obesity epidemic as people replaced fat with sugar which turns us into weight gaining machines and causes diabetes. The other is that cleanliness is best. Yes there are bad things in the soil like tetanus. So get a tetanus shot. However, being antiseptic in everything is actually harmful to you. The rates of asthma and other allergic reactions are now thought to be because we are not exposed to ENOUGH 'germs' or microbes, many of which are helpful to us. Children that grow up in rural areas, on farms, or with contact with animals at a young age show lesser incidents of asthma and other disorders of the immune system. Just as there are microbes in the soil that help our plants, they can help us. This is why organically grown foods are better than those that use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The latter do nothing for the nutritional value of the food, they just increase the size (and usually the amount of sugar) in the food. Which is not what we really need.

I live in unincorporated Orange County just outside Orlando. I pulled up the city code on municode.com. It is insane what they can and can't make you do, plant,not plant. The code for unincorporated orange county is not much better. This really isn't the governments place to restrict what people can grow in their yards. If people want control over that they can live in a deed restricted community. Sorry if this has been beaten thoroughly in another thread. I just had to vent a little! Whew. I feel better.