Hi Fruit Growers,
It’s hard to believe it is nearly June when we are receiving April’s weather. I recommend keeping trees protected with a fungicide while this wet weather continues. If you find apple scab in your orchard, apply a full rate of Captan now and repeat in 7 days.

There are a lot of black rot lesions (also called frog eyed leaf spot) on apple leaves, especially on Cortlands. Black rot will continue to be a problem during this wet weather. If you see many small brown spots on the leaves now, consider adding Topsin M in your next spray. Spots on the leaves are not a problem, but black rot infections on fruit is a problem.

Plum curculio will continue to migrate into orchards for another couple of weeks. An insecticide treatment is probably needed at this time. There was a lot of plum curculio egg laying activity last weekend, and it looks like there could be a lot of activity again this weekend. Hopefully this will be the last insecticide application necessary to control plum curculio. In cooler, coastal orchard, plum curculio activity will continue later into June. Coastal orchards will probably require another spray next week. Use Imidan, Avaunt, Calypso or Assail.

I haven’t seen any summer generation European red mite eggs, but they are probably out there. Spray threshold for this time of year is 1 mite per leaf.

Heather