sherwindu wrote in message ...
Hey Rat Girl,
I am sorry I don't belong to your church of the organics. I have visited organic
orchards, and see a lot of spoiled fruit on the ground. I have tried organic
sprays, and from my experience, they don't work. I loose very little fruit to
insect damage.
There is no good organic spray for Apple Maggot, etc. The organic sprays are a pain

to use. For example, Surround leaves an ugly film on the fruit, which would make
insect damage almost preferable. Organic sprays and other preventatives have a long
way to go to get me to use them. Having a small backyard orchard, I value ALL of my
fruit, and am not willing to sacrifice a good portion of it on the alter of
organics.

Sherwin D.


I do believe that things are different in different parts of the
country. On the west coast, I have seen unsprayed plum and apple trees
from Seattle to the Bay Area (including Portland and Eugene) producing
prolifically. In the Bay Area itself, I have seen countless citrus,
also unsprayed. Evidently the climate does some things to a variety of
pests, or simply the apple trees in those urban areas are too few and
far between for apple maggots to prosper. I do have maggots in my two
apple trees in SE MI, and I just ignore the trees because anyway there
are numerous apple trees about 300 yards away (well within range).

For many diseases, it is clear that a fat layer of wood chips, plus
some manure every now and again, rock dust and wood ash occasionally,
vastly improves the tree resistance. I just met a guy who gardens in
Hawaii, which is disease hell. he has a backyard orchard with over 30
fruit trees/shrubs, and he does nothing to any of them except feed the
soil (well, prune too). I have myself several pear trees, also
unsprayed, which produce 50% clean fruit - good enough for me. But the
Midwest seems to be worse than the West Coast as far as fruit pests.