Hi Fruit Growers,

Our final twilight meeting of the year is next Thursday, June 18th at 5:30, at Rocky Brook Orchard, 997 Wapping Road, Middletown, RI. You will love Rocky Brook Orchard! Greg Ostheimer’s 5 acre orchard has over 80 varieties of apples plus pear and quince trees. George Hamilton from University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension will show his Sprayer Patternator. With this machine we’ll be able to evaluate sprayer coverage. It should be great! BRING A LAWN CHAIR for a picnic in the orchard. The meeting is free to RIFGA members or costs $20 for non-members. And membership is $40 per year. Two pesticide recertification credits are available.

I believe we can safely say primary apple scab season is over for the year. This means you can extend your fungicide applications to every 2-3 weeks, depending on what fungicides you spray. In general, captan alone lasts 2 weeks and captan plus Topsin M protects for up to 3 weeks. Other fungicides good for protecting from summer diseases include Inspire Super, Pristine, Flint, Sovran, and Indar. These should be mixed with captan. Once 2 inches or more rain falls on a sprayed orchard, consider it washed off.

I visited several orchards last week and found no fire blight strikes. Well, perhaps a couple in one orchard, but certainly not like anything we saw last year. I plan to visit some more orchards this week and specifically look for fire blight, but I don’t expect to find any. If you suspect fire blight in your orchard please call or email me.

It’s a nice time of year in apple orchards – primary scab season is over, plum curculio is finished and there aren’t many other pests around. Hopefully it’s time to give your sprayer a rest.

Hope to see you at the meeting,

Heather