I’m finding it difficult to make time to get out to many orchards and the next two weeks won’t be any better. What I hear from other states is apple maggot flies have been around and it would be wise to spray with an insecticide at least in early maturing varieties including Gingergold, Gravenstein and Honeycrisp. Use half rates of Imidan or full rates of Assail or Calypso.

Scout your trees for European red mites and two spotted spider mites especially on Red Delicious and Empires. The threshold for July is 5 mites per leaf. Miticide choices include Kanemite, Portal, Zeal, Acramite and Nexter. Acramite tends to be more effective against TSSM than ERM, and Nexter works better against ERM than it does on TSSM.

I hope some of you will be at the Massachusetts Fruit Growers’ meeting on Monday at Parlee Farms in Tyngsboro, MA. You can’t be guaranteed a meal (but I’ve never seen anyone not fed) so you can probably still attend even if you haven’t signed up yet: http://www.massfruitgrowers.org/2011/2011summermeeting.html

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