Either l/s or copper is a good dormant spray for grapes. Copper can have long-term ill effects over many years if it builds up in the soil. It may also have shorter-term effects but I never heard of any myself. I have been using copper but am switching to l/s this year due to the long-term buildup issue. If you want to spray both l/s and copper I think its OK to not space much them PROVIDED the vines are dormant. But, there should be no reason to do both sprays; if you need the copper for some particular disease just skip the l/s. This year I am just doing l/s on all my fruit trees except the stone fruits which have had a disease needing copper. So, they are getting copper. Scott

Well, in my garden here in Santa Cruz, I am spraying this week as we have a very short window in the mild climate here. I had to manually defoliate many apple trees in order to get ready to spray. Some apple trees tend to be slow to defoliate since we practically never drop below freezing here, and this despite 800+ hours of annual chill. The cool temps 32-50F don't seem to be enough to entice the apples to loose their leaves in a timely manner. I don't spray Granny smith and pink lady since they seem to keep their leaves all year - they just molt. Those of us in warm climates have a very, very small window of time to Spray. I do it once around new year and I go at the peach trees a second time in Spring (early February here) to get peach curl. I don't spray anything else besides polysul (lime-sulfur fungicide), which is amazing for peach curl. I also do a second spraying in February on any apple trees that showed any signs of mildew the previous season. I will also spray my cherimoyas this year as the extended chill makes them more subsceptible to fungi. I've never done this, it will be an experiment to see if it actually works. Does anyone know what organic to spray on apricots? I've never sprayed them, but I've noticed there's some sort of blossom induced wilt that occurs in the Spring, it's not fireblight, it's called something else, I forget the name.

I spray oil and lime sulfur all the time. I just don't spray cots with it.

With the exception of rosey apple aphid fruit growers don't usually worry much about aphids except in immature trees. For these I'm not sure if oil helps much early anyway as aphids become established after pedal fall and I believe they are pretty mobile. If you forgo the captan you can always use the refined oil commonly used today at petal fall or later as long as temps don't go into the '90s -just throw it in the tank mix. This is when calcium is first applied as well, although I never use it. Only my Honeycrisp seem to pay the price for this negligence.