Thread: apple tree

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone knew what to use on an apple tree, pestaside. Last year was the first summer in our home and there is an apple tree out back by our pool. It grew nice apples but they were ruined by the bugs and what not. What do you use that would be safe for children and our pool, so we would be able to eat the apples?
Thanks

It is not leagal for a certified pesticide applicator to refer to any pesticide as safe.

Any product used to control apple worm will be a neurotoxin, usualy a nicotinic inhibitor. While spraying i have had symptoms such as headaches, soar throat, and increased salivation.

Properly handled they should not be a probelm, but ai do ahve concerns with small children, their nervous system is still developing, and we need to apply these product up to every 14 days for months to be effective, both insecticides and fungicides.

Call your local ag agent and look around in stores. Read the labels and for they are the law.

Having grown-up and having my teeth cut on both an Iowa and Minnesota apple orchard, I've had many hours with all the insecticides any cancer patient could attest to.

The simplist, yet most talked against deterent to infestations (because it makes no money for the chemical industry) is dish washer detergent. True, repeat applications are necessary weekly, but chemotherapy and chemical costs far overshadow the additional effort needed to spray so often.

Let me know if you need solution advice, equipment needs, etc. There's volumes of information out there detailing methods and compounds - it's just that our academic and scientific advice is so overwhelmingly favored to agrichems, one has to look a bit farther to find reasonably sane alternatives.

Down here, we control insect, viral, bacterial and other pathogens with ONLY kitchen cupboard solutions, as indiscriminate use of chemicals have presented countless side-effect problems, cancers being only one of many.

Reed, how do you use soap for apple maggot? (armyworm or what ever it may be in your area)

Our problems here including the rusts, cankers, rots, wilts, anthracnose, scales, galls, etc., etc. either exacerbate disease cycles or create them.

All borers (White oak borer, Oak timberworm, Columbia Timber beetle, Pin-hole borer, Twig pruner, Carpenter worm) and leaf eaters (Gregarious Oak leafminer, Oak Skeletonizer, Leafroller, sawfly, Gypsy moth, Forest tent caterpillar, Orangestripe oakworm, Fall cankerworm, etc.) have a larva stage at which they are susceptable to exposure. Same with fruit eating worm borers.

Soap (with trace phosphates) is itself a surfactant - something that alters the surface tension of water (makes it more wet). The detergent is the reaction of a wetting agent to break apart large or oily bonded substances. When detergent dries, it leaves a film on the leaf surface, like applying Salsa to your taco. If the soap hits the larvae, it becomes susceptable to exposure and dies, if the larvae consumes residue (if it still wants to eat the leaves in spite of the taste), it injests the adjuvant, killing it.

WE've had complete eradication when disrupting these feeding/breeding cycles with soap spray only. Perhaps due to unsubstantiated suspicions that insect vectoring of our known fungal diseases are reduced as a threat when populations are reduced, but the overall view seems to be that virulence of our other diseases seem to subside when we control some of the insect population outbreaks. Otherwise, we tend to leave alone the infestations occuring in the rural stands, mostly because we've noticed thru the years that the trees always appear to adapt to what man considers obnoxious. The tent caterpillars can cycle twice a year (for example) and completely strip miles of canopies, yet the timing is such that re-leafing is still viable, it being both late enough, or early enough in the tree canopy cycle to compensate the loss of leaves. However, someone with a patio, b-b-q grill and picnic table wants the ???? squirmy worms out of there, so we spray.

Sunlight brand (cheap) with lemon scent (has trace of citric oil) works wonders, has less phosphates than most name-brand soaps.

So you are saying with the fruit borere that you are coatin ghte eggs and interupting the gass exchange through the egg case? This reduceds the populations of worms in the fruit?

What are the frequencies of application? with the fly larve found up here (Army worm) they recomend several applications of the cholinesterace inhibiting type products.

JP,
cholinesteraese, sterol, or any of the reproductive and/or nerve impluse inhibitors work on humans just as on insect. That's why I started to research alternatives, although not fast enough because I came down with stage4 NHL ten years ago.

The soap method is simple, yet a bit more labor intensive. Periodic (weekly during larval stage) spraying may not be such an efficient method when applied commercially, unless these are your trees. However, on our spray missions (which we scheduled for weekly, non-stop coverage) we managed to include most all of our customer base and down here, we're spread-out over 2,000 sq miles.

Soap is a wonder treatment - even had success in eradicating thrips, aphids, spidermites, and to a degree, fire ants. Borers, when hit right, crumble, drown, or freeze to death from loss of water resistance on their bodies. Egg clusters, yes, this method apparently interrupts the air exchange, but I feel it has more to do with breaking down the waxy protective barriers. On underside of leaf surfaces, the residue also sticks in spite of rainfall, giving the first foodsource a nasty taste (IMO).

Nicotinic acid, citrus oils, even cayenne pepper has shown good results here as well on insect populations.

How about the product called "Surround" it has been used by the
Rodale institute for organic gardening on fruit trees. I think it is made from a refined light clay and when you spray it on the trees it coats the leaves and fruit and inhibits attack from the plum curculio and apple maggot and other insects. JPM

At what point in the spring do you start spraying with soap solution and at what concentration?