What did you do in your orchard today?

[CrealCritter]

I watched three vids of how to prune apple trees. The best one was from UC Santa Cruz. So I went at it. Got five of them done, and then hubs got the very tall water sprouts cut more than half way down.

The UC Santa Cruz teacher said that if you trim those leaf bud branches (diff from fruit buds) about half way down, you'll get solid MORE leaf growing branch. If you cut it way down, then you'll still get crazy growth, but it won't go as high. If you cut off 1/4 of the leaf branches, you get very modest growth. So I cut them off as much as hubs could reach with extension pruners. As I am shrinking as I age, and since I'm not stable on a stool in mud, its what I needed to do.

The copper oil suspension spray might happen today. Its gonna rain later on tonite, so I want it to have a chance to dry.

Most apples varieties grow on spurs (short nubs on banches and trunk) the spurs grow like a 1/4" per season, they start to develop on second year wood. I think I would leave those alone, I personally feel it's better to thin set apples than to not set enough apples.

Otherwise remove water sprouts, and crossed branches. Prune to open center for good air flow and good form with strong scaffold branches to support apple load. Remove dead and weak branches all the way to the truck or where they orginated from.

Some apple varieties are tip bearing vs spur bearing so puring those is a little differnt. You want to prune to produce a bunch of new growth on those varieties.

Check your varieties to determine if spur or tip bearing.

Now that you've pruned, I agree it would a good time to spray a good dormant spray/fungicide (copper) mix to reduce the chance of infection of new wounds. I like to think of it similarly to, I cut myself, I'm going to attend to my own wound.

Thanks you so much for sharing. I learned something new. We are always learning which is such a great thing.

Jesus is Lord and Christ

 

[flowerbug]

...Although 20% Palmolive orginal green seems very high to me.

IMO way too much... oh well... good luck

previous response about adding soap to oil to make it more sprayable, yes that makes some sense, but to me the point of using any oil would be to smother and coat things so if you thin it down you are then losing the smothering effect. perhaps the soap then works as a bug killer and smothering agent itself, but then i would just use either plain if i were going after coating/smothering/protecting (oil) or bugs (soap). at least this is my reasoning...

 

[CrealCritter]

Beautiful sunny very little wind and right temperatures to spray our mature bartlet pear.

Here is my very first homemade dormant oil spray attempt based on a lot of research.

Recipe (I made a double batch)

I thought it might be too much palmolive but after adding 8 tablespoons and 2 gallons of water to my sprayer and aggiating it. There were very little suds.

I proceeded to make a 4 gallon batch in the sprayer. 16 tablespoons of homemade dormant oil, 16 tablespoons of organic liquid copper and 4 gallons of water. I kept the aggitator running on full speed the whole time. This is what the tank looked like after aggiating about 5 minute. I'm pleased no suds and slick like a dormant oil should be.

Jesus is Lord and Christ