Rather than trying to decipher the message myself I've chosen to post excerpts from an email from a local resident regarding apple and plum issues, compost questions, etc. Please advise! Thanks!"I think we have
coddling moths and apple maggots. My husband sprayed lime sulphur one or
twice, but apparently, we need more input than just that. Can you give us
some pointers to increase the quality of our crop?
I think I have coddling moths,
because much of the fruit looked like this: and it got much worse in later fall
as they had time to burrow around or it may be apple maggots
I think we also had
some flyspeck and sooty blotch - those don't really bother me but I thought it
might help I.D. our problems. I think we also have some tarnished plant bugs,
but they don't make the whole apple unusable. We've had long grass under the
trees which I think we need to remove and perhaps mulch. Is there a preferred
mulch for apples?
Also,
our plums had a boom year but many rotted from the inside out. You could see
many small points of mold emergiing from the skins. I thinned the fruit several
times, but apparently not enough. What was wrong and What treatments do I need
to do to minimize that molding agian.
I'm looking for a list of what to do when this next year.
I'd like the treatments to be as organic as possible, but I think our pests
have built up over time so I may need some extra help from chemicals until I
can get those numbers down.
I also wonder how easy it is to kill the pests if you
compost. I'm not sure I can get our compost hot enough in the winter to take
care of the fallen fruit I've picked up."
