There are some situations that I'll use either a herbicide or pesticide spray. One example is very early season black aphids that get on my cherry and plum trees just as the trees are leafing out in May - still frosts at night, and there are no predator bugs about. The aphids will so ball up the growing tips of the trees that the the entire plant is stunted, let alone produce any fruit. So I'll spray something - this year a Pyrethrum - based 'soap'. After that first spray, the predators are then able to keep up with the aphids for the rest of the season.

I use dormant oil spray on all the fruit trees - it helps.

I'll spray apples - usually twice a year. I'd just rather prefer to have 5% wormy and 95% clean for processing than the other way around.

And I'll spot-spray herbicide on thistle, bind weed, knotweed, and other goodies trying to keep 3 acres from turning into a weed patch - its also the law to control noxious weeds or the county will come do it for you.

But I ignore dandelion and other weeds that aren't particularly bothersome.

David -- yes, it seems that sometimes fruit will be totally lost if not sprayed. My neighbor's peaches, since the father died, are a mass of mold. But I want to tell you an apple story.

The apple tree in my front yard has been sprayed in the past (before we bought the house 16 years ago) and I do get quite a few wormy apples.

A couple years ago my tree completely frosted, so no apples, so I hiked up the sods tasting every apple tree on my way (from the abandoned home sites from back when West Va had a population) and finally came to a delicious tree way up at the top. I got permission from the land owner to pick, hiked up there with an apple picker and my climbing back pack and filled it with 50 pounds of apples. There was not a single worm in the whole bunch. Hasn't been sprayed since the Depression, I'd wager. Better balance or just different apples?

I would suggest that a lone apple tree that has no nearby apple trees [including crab apples] might not be pest pressured like apple trees that are clustered or have neighboring apple trees.

I believe in hand picking where feasible...23 Japanese Beetles this year; five Colorado Potato Beetles,and one wqrm on lettuce. Some things like BT would be good for cole crops. However, in the corn belt, when corn root worm beetles suddenly attack like they did on my #7 and last planting of sweet corn, I will shoot to kill them for you have only a few hours until the silks are ruined.

Apples around my area need some good selective sprays of some kind to get anything worth eating....unless you have a new and secret planting.

Sprays of any kind should only be used under certain circumstances. Any spray that is supposed to kill insects will, many are very broad spectrum even the "organic" insecticides although some are fairly specific. Any spray that will kill a plant will also kill every plant.

An organic grower should start with the soil the plants are to grow in and try to get that soil in to a good healthy condition. Plants that grow strong and healthy have fewer problems with insect pests and plant diseases. Other alternatives to sprays are insectaries where predators can find food and shelter while waiting for the insect they predate to appear.

I live in an area that traditionally held apple orchards, so there are thousands of apple trees, most untreated, unpruned, and uncared for, all around - they use the ground for pasture, the cattle and deer eat the apples as they fall.

So along the roadsides, there are a fair number of pippin trees, some guy tossed his core out the window and the trees grow. I've a couple just across the road from my place. The fruit isn't wonderful, but certainly edible. Anyway, the two trees never seem to get any worms.

Thats the general folklore around here, the *wild* apple trees are worm free. Now the fruit might only be the size of pingpong balls.....

I was thinking I should add that I do, very rarely, add chemical fertilizers to plants as well. This year I used some 15-15-15-4 (iron) on my stands of basil, okra, and kale. They were all sitting there doing nothing through most of June, so I put down maybe a teaspoon per plant, and they, um, reacted very quickly and positively to the fertilizer. We have a very short growing season here, and sometimes ya do what ya gotta do.

With a couple dozen frozen basil packets for future pesto, couple dozen packets of frozen kale, and a dozen quarts of pickled okra, with plenty more to process this coming week, I think it was worthwhile, even though I shuffle my feet and gaze awkwardly downwards when posting here on the organic forum.

But no sprays on vegetables, except soapy water for aphids.

It's cost and benefit. I don't spray cucumbers, but I do not grow them either anymore. I spray brassica with BT (a bacterium, not a chemical) because I have to have my Fall and winter greens. I don't spray zucchini, but I have Tromboncino to pick up the production after the rest has been killed by SVB. Though lately I have painted the stem with Sevin and some success (4 zucchini plants are still alive, never happened before), a targeted application that probably does not bother the fruit.

I prefer collard over kale, because kale gets more disease at my site. I spread Sluggo everywhere, once a year in May. I carefully rotate potatoes to minimize their exposure to blight. I bury all plant residuals in a single bed. And I would happily use lead with lots of kinetic energy to control deer, even though it is a really bad poison, but you can't shoot inside the city limits. Generally, if a plant gets diseased here, or has trouble fruiting properly (fennel for example) I will not grow it. I still have more than enough choice of vegetables.

Preventative (most specifically for fungal disease) and specific pest treatments for populations found on plants is generally the best way to go about it in the home garden.

There's no use to preventatively treat for most fungal disease before it's near when conditions are right for it's spread and there's no use to treat for a pest that isn't around and/or it's population isn't at a level where treating is beneficial. For some pests, beneficials will take care of the problem for you. For some other pests, the tolerance level of the pest is 0 in the home garden (for me, horn worms).

Many pests and disease move in waves like expected seasonal weather...generally they don't move into an area until a certain time of year (pests) or until weather conditions are favorable (fungal disease) whether they're blown in or they're already around in the soil/border plants/etc.

re horn worms. This fall, I have literally thousands of those huge moths flying around slurping nectar out of salvia, agastache, and what not thats currently blooming. Clouds of the things. Next year is gonna be interesting......

The thing I hate about horn worms (or, the moths rather) is that they don't lay their eggs in clusters...they tend to lay a single egg in a small area...sometimes you'll find a few on a single leaf.

The only thing I hate about it is that it makes scouting for them quite hard. If they laid them in clusters it would be a whole lot easier to find/remove them before hatching. They're very small globe-shaped eggs...surprisingly small for the large beasts they become.

Be sure you know which of the Sphinx moths are the ones you like to hate and which ones produce the Tomato/Tobacco hornworm. In this family there is the Clearwing, aka Hummingbird moth, that many sources are linking to the Hornworms and while this Sphinx has larva similar to Hornworms its choice of food is not the tomato or tobacco plants. The larva of the Hummingbird moth feeds on Honeysuckles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sphinx Moths

This post was edited by kimmsr on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 6:34

This is the fella I have clouds of right now - body about 2 inches long, with folded wings, maybe 3".

Well . . . he's pretty, at any rate.
Is it bad luck to be talking about hornworms?