shotgun
Full Member
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:28 am
Location: eastern panhandle w.v.

spray for fruit trees??

soap spray ?

witch brand or am I wasting my time

any help a plus

thanks

robert31
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Posts: 9
Joined: Sun May 16, 2010 1:53 pm
Location: Illinois

I bought a pyrethrin based spray to use on my fruit trees because it is an organic pesticide made from chrysanthemums. The brand was ferti-lome. It seems to work fairly well and is supposed to not be too harmful to the environment.

cynthia_h
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Location: El Cerrito, CA

What fruit tree(s) do you need to spray? for what pests/diseases? at what time of year?

There is no one Magic Bullet/Spray for every fruit tree/problem/season.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

JONA878
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Location: SUSSEX

Spraying fruit trees is always going to be a thorny subject as regards trying to be as near to organic as possable.
Pyrithrin and derris are indeed natural substances but they are just as harmful to the preds as man made pyrithrum sprays would be. In fact we found many years ago that red spider in the orchards very quickly buit in complete immunity to derris as the efficacy of the substance is not that great.
Any spray that is used must be as near perfect in its action or the surviving beasties left will rapidly produce an immune community.
I still feel that other than the use of grease bands for winter moth and pheremone traps for codling and tortrix, garden trees are best left to their own devices. Unless you can complete a full spray programme.
Once you have a good balance of pest and predator most trees manage quite well.

saramartin
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Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 7:13 am

I did search and find a brand Pre-pink, which is looking very good brand for fruit tree spray. :o

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rainbowgardener
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Location: TN/GA 7b

Here's the list of ingredients in pre-pink

1.0 tbsp Immunox 1.55%EC or
Fungicide 3336 WP 3 tsp
plus
1.5 tsp ferbam 76W
plus
2.5 fl oz M-Pede
plus
2 fl oz permethrin 2.5%
OR
2-4 tbsp esfenvalerate 0.425%

https://www.virginiafruit.ento.vt.edu/SprayGuide/AppleHomePrepink.html

It is a broad spectrum, multi-ingredient spray.

The immunox active ingredient is Myclobutanil a fungicide

Here's a safety sheet on it, including:

Minimize your exposure to pesticides. Wear goggles or safety glasses, rubber gloves and shoes and clothing to cover arms and legs.

Must be reapplied at 7-10 day intervals as long as disease conducive conditions are prevalent.

https://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/CONTROLS/myclobutanil.html

Here's the MSDS (safety sheet) for ferbam, ferric dimethyldithiocarbamate:

You can't cut and paste from this document, but it recommends use of full face respirator when applying, protective clothing, wash the outside of gloves before you touch them to remove them, etc etc
https://www.hort.wisc.edu/cran/mgt_articles/articles_pest_mgt/labels_msds/usmsds/ferbammsds.pdf

The m-pede is insecticidal soap. As such it is probably safer than some of the other ingredients in this brew, but it is almost 40% alcohol, flammable and "harmful to aquatic invertebrates" if it gets in the water supply (as are all the other ingredients). https://titanarum.uconn.edu/msds/mpede_msds.pdf

The esfenvalerate insecticide is a suspected endocrine disrupter listed by World Health Org as moderately toxic to humans and is described as very highly toxic to amphibians, fish, molluscs, insects, zooplankton, etc https://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC33172#Ecotoxicity

Here's what Wiki says about esfenvalerate:
Fenvalerate is an insecticide of moderate mammalian toxicity. In laboratory animals, central nervous system toxicity is observed following acute or long-term exposure. Fenvalerate has applications against a wide range of pests. Residue levels are minimized by low application rates. Fenvalerate is most toxic to bees and fish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenvalerate

So this is a whole combination of different fungicides and insecticides designed in one application to control all the possible problems you could have. But what that means is you are spraying potent eco-toxins to treat a problem you may not have. We know nothing about the additive (and multiplicative effect) of combining poisons like that. But it is clear and obvious that they will have increased effects and that any beneficials and soil biology that aren't harmed by one of the ingredients may well be harmed by others.

Research (that I cited elsewhere and am not going to go back and look for right now) suggests that the disappearance of honeybees (colony collapse disorder) is not due to any one particular chemical in the environment, but the accumulation of a multitude of them. Abandoned hives were found to contain significant amounts of like 40 different chemicals, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides etc. The build up of all these chemicals is believed to weaken them so they can't fight off diseases and pests that in the past wouldn't have damaged them.

If you are going to use poisons in your garden, at least figure out what problem you actually HAVE and treat that one!



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