The apple bloom period this year has been approaching a month, by far the longest I've seen. Some varieties were much earlier than others with more variance than usual, but individual trees also had sections that bloomed much earlier than other parts of the tree. Worried about PC damage, I haven't waited but have started my petal fall sprays, trying to avoid areas still in bloom, hopefully not damaging my bee population significantly in the process.

It's not normal in our zone but warm weather and then quite cool has messed up normal sequencing. At least I'm hoping more of the late flowers set fruit where frost damaged the earlier round.

So far there's no pest activity besides caterpillars so you can probably hold off unless you see something.

There's some new type of worm that's doing quite a bit of damage on random apples. Almost looks like tent caterpillar damage, but no tents.

I have trees with lovely fruit set, gorgeous little redish purple apples, about the size of marbles, but scattered throughout the tree are fresh blossoms just opened and even some yet to bloom. This is giving the curculio much opportunity to decorate fruit. I guess we may be eating less than perfect fruit this summer/fall. Ted

My 'Pristine Apple' is almost in full bloom. My 'Jonagold' comes in second with 50% bloom, and my 'Enterprise' will start blooming only tomorrow. 'Enterprise' is soooo slow this year. It has buds but has hardly leafed out. Just don't get it. 'Enterprise' was much earlier last year and kept up with Pristine and Jonagold. An odd year!

Yeah, I'm really not sure what to do. As MrsG47 reminded me, PC is due here in 2 days. Yet, most of my trees are in some form of bloom now(no real fruit yet), and all of my trees still have at least a good amount of petals on them. Does this mean that PC won't have anything to attack? Or is the RI PC date wrong? I don't want to spray any insecticide until the petals have dropped for fear of harming the bees. At the moment, I just plan on waiting until they do drop... but I am worried. -Glenn

Glenn,
1. Where does one find an "expected" PC arrival date?
2. Including Deer Repellent in your tank with fungicide & insecticide? I like this idea. Don't you fear diluting the effectiveness of the "cides"? Are you counting the repellent concoction as water?
Thanks, Chad

My parents 2 apple trees are really screwed up.
Snowsweet is blooming before the really early Liberty.
My trees appeared frozen in time for a good 2 weeks.

-Eric
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{{gwi:54837}}

Hi BlackRag-
1.) We have 'Orchard Radar' (link below) here in RI, which is nice. Looking at more closely, it appears that they've updated the date since MrsG47 first sent it to me? There now saying to start spraying on the 7th and even they admit that's only at 95% petal fall. I think that answers my question. Thanks!
2.) For sprays like Deer Out, I believe I only add a cup per gallon, so I really haven't worried about it diluting the fungicides/insecticides. I can't be so precise with the wide gallon markers on my tank anyway. If I were to count it, then yes, I'd count it as water. Any time it's come up here on the forum, I haven't heard someone saying that doing this is a problem. And since I haven't seen any detrimental results, then this is what I do, and it works for me.
-Glenn

Here is a link that might be useful: Middletown RI, - Orchard Radar

What is more disturbing is the high percentage of apple fruitletts in my orchard that are brown inside. This is looking like the worst year in my own orchard since I began growing fruit in the northeast.