Pgiordano:

I visited your blog and was unable to find anything resembling a photgraph of apricots. For me to be able to view you photo, you will have to tell me where and how to find it on the "blog", the purpose of which is not at all clear to me.

Nonetheless, I will venture an opinion on what is wrong with your apricots, and it is not "blight". Blight is a catch-all word, used to describe many different types of plant infections, usually fungal in origin.

I suspect that the little oozing spots on your apricots are due to visits by the oriental fruit moth. In the Washington, D.C. area (of which I am a part), this insect is ever-present, and the only way to grow stone fruits such as apricots, peaches, and plums is to spray the trees and fruit, beginning very soon after petal fall, with an effective insecticide. If you choose to subsequently protect the fruits in something like nylon shoe-store try-on "footies", as I often do, you must still spray the fruit until it achieves such a size that it can be selected, thinned, and bagged. Otherwise the oriental fruit moth (OFM) will visit nearly every fruit, and will continue to do so throughout the season until very late.

Copper spray is a good dormant spray for overwintering fungal diseases such as mildews and some leaf maladies, but it has no insecticidal properties at all. Copper is a fungicide, and, marginally, a bactericide.

This year I picked over 150 pounds of large, perfect apricots from 3 trees, but not without a lot of care and attention. I use permethrin as a fruit tree insecticide, as well as imidan. You could do the same, but you would have to do something similar to the procedures I follow.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA