Asian pears suffer from fireblight in my yard. It doesn't usually affect the fruit. I have seen the fruit damaged by hot dry weather in the summer followed by a lot of rain right as the fruit is getting ready to ripen (splits the fruit open). European pears suffer mostly from fireblight and sometimes some form of rust disease. I think insects try to invade them but the skin is so tough that they do little damage. With peaches the two biggest problems I have are Japanese beetles/Green junebugs and brown rot. The trees also get Peach tree borers but they don't seem to be doing much damage. The problem with the beetles is that they chew open the fruit (sometimes before it is even close to being soft) and then every bug and insect on the planet comes over for dinner. It makes it hard to harvest the few good peaches when there are swarms of Bald-faced hornets drunk on rotting peach juice.

For some reason my yard is not bothered by animal pests (I do have a tall fence and busy terriers, so they must keep everything at bay). I have bugs and insects but they never seem to overwhelm the trees. All the classic fruit tree diseases are in my area. I spray. I follow the directions. I'll try anything to keep the trees happy. The big problems I see are that most of the major diseases are spread by wind and pollinating insects - which makes sticking to a spay program very difficult on these windy days of spring, and we need the insects for pollination.

Thanks for the insight, John. I do worry about fire blight and have been spraying copper regularly before rainy weather. Hopefully that keeps it at bay. The Ayers pear is reportedly FB resistant. We'll see how it holds up.

I bought a bag of Surround WP last year and have started to spray that on the Ayers and plum, since the petals have fallen. I figure it can do no harm at worst, and at best it will hopefully discourage at least the Japanese beetles and plum curculio, if either are present at all. I mixed spinosad w/ the Surround WP to get the first round of moths. I have no idea if they have laid eggs yet or will even become a problem.

Animal pests should be a non-issue, as I plan to bag fruit after they reach a half inch or so. We're urban enough that I've never seen a deer in our neighborhood. Squirrels, on the other hand, are abundant and destructive.

I'm a little worried about peach borer, as I found some gummy sap at the base of the peach when I was planting it. I didn't know what that was, at the time of planting, but after some googling it does point to potential borer infection.

What sprays do you prefer to use? Conventional or synthetic. I'm going to try organic this year. If that proves too much of a hassle or ineffective, I may switch to immunox and triazicide just after petal fall and bag thereafter.

I have apples and peaches, and Japanese beetles and fruit moths are my biggest problems. I haven't taken measures against them yet, so I have no recommendations. I think someone nearby set out a Japanese beetle trap a couple of years ago. It backfired and attracted hundreds of them to the neighborhood.

Spinosad works great on the borers too! I've used the sprinkle bait kind applied at the base of the tree in the heat of summer (after scraping all the mulch away from the tree trunk). The only problem I've heard about for using spinosad is that a lot of pest develop a resistance to it in only 2 years - which is a big problem. The spinosad product called 'Come and Get It' is the only "organic" option for fire ant control and it is based on spinosad. I use Amdro around the perimeter of the yard and spinosad for the actual veggie beds and so far I don't notice any resistance being built up but time will tell.

I have trouble getting Surround to actually stick to the leaves in an even coat. I don't have a sprayer with an agitator so I dropped a few glass marbles down into the tank and just shake it all the time while spraying. It does seem to have an effect and organic peach growers swear by it so I'll keep using it.

The north side of my yard is lined with giant white oaks and their acorns are the type that sprout soon after dropping off the tree - so squirrels have learned to eat them right away instead of storing them. Luckily the acorns are dropping in sinc with most of my fruit ripening so the tree rats are busy with nuts and tend to ignore the fruit 20 feet away.

Speaking of fruit trees - I cannot recommend highly enough the dwarf everbearing mulberries offered in catalogs and sometimes local nurseries (I bought one from BB's in Sanford). Most are a form of Morus nigra which is not completely happy with our heat and humidity so I wouldn't consider it a long lived tree to plant outdoors but in a large pot on the patio it continually produces fruit. I keep mine in the greenhouse for the winter and I get a large cereal bowl full of berries for a few weeks starting this time of year and continue to first frost. They tend to bloom one month and fruit the next over and over. They are not the absolute best tasting mulberry but they are very good. Almost every cutting taken will root and most of them will bear fruit while tiny. Cute little trees.

DEER grrrrr

I had pears and peaches and yes an apple tree too!! All of them got infested with the pests!! I am not planting these again ... High maintenance and heavy pesticide use. They did fruit heavy but could never pick any to eat.

So I grow Blackberry, strawberry, Blueberry and figs . these are easy to grow and give a load of fruits. I am also growing Pawpaws, a mulberry, and persimmon. Just started last year. let see ...

Well I set out some homemade codling moths traps in an attempt to monitor their populations.

1 cup cider vinegar + 1/3 cup molasses + 1/8 tsp ammonia + 5 cups water

I cut some doors in plastic bottle, poured this in, and hung from the trees. We'll see if anything shows up. I hate to spray the spinosad indiscriminately and will hopefully be able to time things better if moths start to show up in the traps. I'm too cheap to spend $ for the pheremone based ones. I'll report back if I start to get catches in the traps.

John, I've been pining for a mulberry but am running out of space in my yard. A dwarfing variety sounds exactly like what I need.

Sabji, do you know what insect pests were the biggest problem? What's your yard like? Urban or more rural? I wonder if pest pressure is lower in more urban yards.

I had not used any chemicals, ..pesticides or fungicides, as my well was closeby...

Brown rot, june bugs , Stink bug, some kind of borer, and a fungus.. to name a few...

well the trees are long gone.