July 9,
I hope many of you will go to Belchertown on Thursday, July 15th for the Massachusetts fruit growers summer meeting. They need to have your lunch reservation by Monday (July 12). There will be 3 pesticide re-certification credits and the cost is $40 per person. You can register and pay online at http://www.massfruitgrowers.org/2010/summermeeting.html. If you need assistance call me at 874-2967 or 256-7438.

One grower set up three apple maggot fly traps a couple of weeks ago. I checked the traps yesterday and found one apple maggot fly. While this is below the threshold of 1-2 flies per trap, I think all varieties of apples should be protected with an insecticide very soon. If we get rain showers this weekend we can expect more apple maggot flies in orchards following the rain. It would be perfect to apply insecticide right after the rain. Use half rates of Imidan or full rates of Avaunt, Assail, Calypso or Delegate. This week’s New York Scaffolds publication says that Delegate and Altacore should give some protection against moderate apple maggot pressure. Assail and Calypso both give excellent control as well as controlling obliquebanded leafroller and other caterpillars.

European red mites and two spotted spider mites are high at URI’s East Farm orchard. Most trees are severely bronzed. This is odd because we haven’t had problems with mites in this orchard for years and we haven’t applied a miticide or dormant oil for more than 10 years. Another unusual situation – in one orchard where we haven’t found predator mites in the past, this year is loaded with predator mites. The predator mites are feeding on rust mites, which are microscopic mites that generally do not harm apple leaves. The rust mites are food for the predator mites, allowing the predator mite population to soar and keeping the red mite and two spotted mite populations down. I’ve heard of this happening before, but I’ve never actually seen it.

If you need to apply a miticide (where mites are above 5 mites per leaf): Zeal, Kanemite and Portal are good options. Acramite tends to be more effective against two spotted mites than European red mites; Nexter works better against red mites than it does on two spotted mites.

Be sure to check Orchard Radar with help timing your fungicide applications for fly speck and sooty blotch control. Orchard Radar can be found at https://www.uri.edu/research/ipm/
If you want help using Orchard Radar call me.

Next message will be recorded on Friday, July 16.