Rose: first let me say, as the manager for a sewer system, thank you very much for not dumping it into your sewer system where it can wreak havoc on the biological systems there that are critical to the systems proper functioning. That said, I'm with Scott, spray it on your trees as intended or find a waste disposal site that will accept it. The problem with spraying it is it may or may not be effective for it's intended purpose. For my trees, I'd cross my fingers and hope it worked instead of doing a repeat application, others may disagree. BTW, I understand that you didn't intend to have the mix sitting around. A bit off your topic, I've ended up with too much tank once, then I had to figure out what to do with the remainder. Since then, I go and spray enough of my trees with just water first to get a very good idea of how much will be required. Michael

The term systemic can be confusing. Actually when systemics are referred to in fruit culture, generally the more specific term is locally systemic, which means a very limited movement of the pesticide, mostly translaminar, which means movement from one part of the leaf to another, so that if a drop of the chemical lands on a leaf, the whole leaf is protected. Neonicotinoids (basically synthetic nicotine) and spinosyns (Delegate and its organic counterpart, Spinosad) fall into this category. Depending on the chemical, some of them can penetrate the fruit, where they break down, just as they do outside the fruit. The other type of systemic is more broad where the chemical is taken up by the roots and is present throughout the entire tree. Imidacloprid is that type of systemic, and although there is now a formulation for fruit trees, I believe it isn't approved for bearing orchards. Regarding your spray program, I think you're spraying much more than you need to at this point. For #1: Since the insect larva is there when the peach ripens, it is most likely oriental fruit moth (OFM). If it's a tiny entrance hole with pectin bleeding out, it's most definitely OFM. The moth doesn't start flying until after petal fall, so you can wait to start spraying for it after that, but it does require season long control. For #2: This is brown rot and is also a very common problem with stone fruit. Some peaches are more resistant than others. There are two optimum times to protect your crop from this disease. First, and less important, the fungus makes it's presence around bloom. The fungus infects the flowers and can kill them as well as form small cankers on shoots. Although, this does not directly affect the fruit, the cankers and dead flowers can be a source of disease inoculum to infect your fruit later in the season. Therefore, some people choose to spray for brown rot at this time. However, a much more critical time to control this disease is when the fruit gets close to ripening. Once the fruit starts sizing and changing color (last thirty days) it is very susceptible to brown rot. So it's at this time that sprays are the very most effective. In fact, propiconazole, which is what I would recommend to you, is only labeled for use around bloom, and as harvest approaches (It's not labeled for mid-season.) Propiconazole can be purchased on-line as Montery Fungi Fighter. For #3: This I'm unsure about. If you mean the insect is entering the stems of fruit, it could again be OFM. They will sometimes make a blind entrance into the fruit through the stem. However, I've not heard of them causing a swelling in the stem of the fruit. Whatever they are, your OFM control should take care of this pest as well. Lastly, I would discontinue spraying the lime sulfur and from now on would only do one dormant spray application in the spring, which would consist of copper, with a little oil added as a sticker. The lime sulfur isn't going to do much for the pests you mention. I continue to recommend Triazicide once and Done as an insecticide (available at big box stores). It has excellent knockdown of all major stone fruit pests and provides decent residual control. For your interest, the link below discusses rainfastness of various insecticides Here is a link that might be useful: Rain, Rain Go Away

Hi Tammy-- We also considered this idea, but nixed it as it would be far too costly to get the pole barn up to living standards (for our family anyway) for any length of time. In our case, we chose to sell the house and move into an apartment temporarily while we built. Another option is to buy a mobile home (maybe even new or a clean repo) and resell it once the house is built to recoup some of those funds. Odds are, you don't need a pole barn to be habitable after the house is built--you will need a barn. When we finally built our barn/shop, it cost $42K unfinished with another ~$1K of gravel and ~$12K of concrete. Another $10-15K or so to finish the interior perimeter walls (insulated), build 1 divider wall that spans the width of the barn, electrical & lighting, plumbing for a sink (no plans to put in a toilet or shower right now)--but DH, DS & DDad did all the work themselves. The HVAC isn't installed yet either. That's alot of money to sink into temporary human housing that will only need to house farm equipment/cars/livestock after the house is built. Depending on the size of the barn, the size of the house you plan to build, & the builder you choose, building the barn may take just as long as it would take to build the house. So, in a nutshell, building an habitable pole barn for a family of 7 to live in may not be the most economically viable option. It would probably make your DH very happy when all is said and done though as he will have a REALLY nice barn. You also need to check to see if local codes even allow you to build more than one habitable building on 1 piece of property/lot. Our local code does not allow that--you have to survey off and deed each building and the land it sits on separately--another big expense. And our codes are pretty lax around here too. Likely not what you want to hear, but I hope the information above helps!

Lime has absolutely no effect on moss, so you can ignore the advice to lime to get rid of the moss :-) And typically the lime IS applied first.....all it will do is raise the pH of an overly acidic lawn (which is entirely possible in NJ but you won't know for sure unless you test). And since the pH of the soil affects how fertilizer nutrients are processed and absorbed by the plants to which they are applied, getting the soil pH to the desired range will allow the ferts to be utilized much more efficiently. Applying lime is not a fast process to alter pH so ideally it should be applied in fall. As long as it it has been a couple of weeks since you fertilized, you can apply the lime now if you like or feel you need to. But unless you know your current soil pH, you won't have any idea how much to apply.