I use Volck and Neem oil. But my dormant spraying started last fall/winter and has just stopped last week.

LL, dormant oil is primarily for scale and mites. You will likely need to spray at petal fall or thereabouts to check aphids. I routinely get aphids on my plums in May in spite of doing dormant oil.

Scott

thanks for the replies

Scott- when do you spray your dormant oil? I haven't applied mine yet on my apples and cherries but I will this weekend, weather permitting.
I use parafine, fwiw.

Thomis, I put mine on as late as possible, so pink. The later the more damage you do on the bugs/diseases because they are starting to wake up a bit. I often combine with copper or lime-sulphur if I am doing one of those.

In terms of the kind of oil, nobody makes true dormant oil anymore. Thats too bad as the old dormant oils evaporate much more slowly and I expect they would work better. Use the heaviest spray oil you can find. What I think happened is every producer "improved" their dormant oil to all-season at some point, forgetting the advantages of dormant-only in the rush for market share.

Scott

Hey Scott,
You think any of the organic recipes would be good, esp to kill scale like I have (think you said I could just rub scale off if a young tree, but I could do a combo of rubbing and spraying i assume)?

Like Ive seen stuff for Neem Oil mixed with a lil Dishwashing liquid and water. Not sure of the amounts though and can't find recipes online.

I kinda moved away from organic since seems like so many diseases and bugs to combat and its difficult...
But was just curious since i have sooo many bottles of Neem oil I bought on sale (usually $10+, was like $1.50 a bottle one week haha)

I just sprayed mine yesterday. It was warm and sunny and the forecast doesn't look good for the next week. I wanted to get one on there. Wonder if it would hurt to do another at bud break or pink, like you, Scott...

gosh, I thought that you could spray once at anytime that the tree was dormant and achieve the desired results.

I sprayed my trees about three weeks ago on a nice (for dead of winter) day.

I used Bonide horticultural oil at 4% mix. I really soaked the trees to dripping. It was my first year for taking care of my trees and was suprised at what they looked like after I sprayed. You could really tell that they had oil on them. They were actually kinda shiny for a while.

Daemon, the older thinking on dormant oil is anytime, but the most recent thinking is "delayed dormant", i.e. silver tip or even later. Last year I did my oil spray on the apples at tight cluster. What I would recommend anyone do is skim a commercial spray guide for your area just to see what a state in your area is telling the pros to do. You don't have to read all the details, just the rough idea. Below for example is the latest VA guide. Notice the only totally dormant spray they mention is for fireblight. A truly dormant oil spray will get scale and spider mites but may not do much for aphids.

Re: aphids I notice this guide states they should be controlled from silver tip to 1/4-1/2" green, but based on my experience its more like 1/2" green or even a bit later, at least if you are using oil alone to control them.

Army of monkeys, the first thing about neem is the kind of neem you use makes a difference, many products have all the bug killing stuff removed - they are just the oil. Others are just the aza.. stuff which kills the bugs but has no oil. I use raw neem which has some of both in it. Here is a Cornell link if you want some details: Cornell neem info. They don't mention the raw neem. I believe Michael Phillips is correct that the combination of both azadirachtin and oil in raw neem is a better punch than either in isolation so either use some of each or look for the raw neem. If you look at this Cornell study you will see neem kills some aphids, but my experience is it doesn't wipe them out like oil does -- when I spray oil all the aphids I see are dead the next day, whereas with neem half of them die (and then two days later you are back to the same level). These studies are with oil or aza, never both, so both may work better. I have used the raw neem on bugs but it wasn't super good on anything I tried it on so I stick to oil. In its favor I didn't try enough times, but my time is limited for experiments that are not working, I've got bugs to kill.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: VA spray guide 2012

Why not just spray anytime starting at the ground and then up the trunk to the first large branch before getting close to any leaves/buds? The bugs crawl up and down the tree and when they hit the area with oil they will get stuck and die or not being able to go back and forth they will die?

Scottsmith, thanks for the neem oil information. It's got me looking twice at my bottle of Dyna-Gro pure neem oil. There is no information about it's contents (other than being pure & cold pressed), and the only usage mentioned is for "shining leaves". I bought it to use for spider mites (mostly vegetable garden so far) and reading the Cornell paper it looks like it would work...if I knew what I had.

Any ideas about what oil works best for spider mites. Last season I was spraying them with undiluted rubbing alcohol. Looking at them under a hand held microscope, the rubbing alcohol kills them but always misses some...so multiple passes are necessary.

John
Topanga, Ca zone 9b

John, I was raised in Topanga Canyon. Maybe you've heard of my father who died a couple of years ago. He was dubbed by the Topanga Messenger as "the birdman of Topanga" and he wrote a nature column for that paper. His real name was Gerry Haigh. His wife (not my mother, but good friend) still lives in the house I was raised in on W. Hillside Dr.

Here's some info on oil from my experience over the years managing quite a number of orchards in the southern NY area. When trees are dormant to tight green cluster a 2% rate is usually recommended to compensate for less insect vulnerability- as the trees get to tight cluster (speaking of apple maturation) you reduce the concentration to 1% although to control psyla on pears you might want to hit them both times at 2% because psyla are so persistent.

I believe I've read from Cornell that scale are more vulnerable with the earlier ap and mites with the later but I've managed both problems with either application.

I don't believe that heavier oils were more affective in any meaningful way (although I totally respect Scott's opinion) or I assume they would still be manufactured for commercial growers. That's not information- just a strong hunch.

The beauty of the refined oils is that they can be effectively used throughout the spray season and I've been able to knock down mites and scale without even doing an oil spray before petal fall. This has allowed me to control scale and the most harmful insects we face here with only 2 sprays all season, starting at petal fall and following 10 to 14 days later. These sprays have 1% oil (on either the first or second spray) mixed with an appropriate insecticide and fungicide.

Of course what is necessary and affective here doesn't always apply elsewhere but the oil part should be fairly universal. You have to be careful with Captan if you do this, however, as it is strongly incompatible with oil. I've even suffered some phytotoxic reaction with Captan residue on leaves that had been applied 10 days prior to an oil ap.

Just make sure you follow the label for oil and don't spray when it's too cold or too warm. This stuff can be extremely destructive when used incorrectly and I've seen terrible damage when put down during frost on trees at half inch green. The more refined the oil the less chance for damage, so I go with Purespray.

Alan, Re the light vs heavy oils I have seen so many cases where "progress" is not two steps forward, its two steps forward one step back. People get so enamored with the new hot iPad or whatever that they are blind to its shortcomings. But, I could be completely wrong here. If I could find any of the old oil I could test it, but there is not a single supplier left I don't think.

One thing you didn't mention Alan was the best times to spray for aphids. You are using powerful insecticides as well as the oil so maybe the Imidan or whatever just blasts those early aphids to bits. For me I have aphid issues every summer. The spray programs seem to focus on the delayed dormant period as the best time.

Scott

PS Alan, a Google just pulled up the following quote from a Cornell guide:

The heavier the oil, the more effective it is in control and the more likely it is to cause plant damage.

They go on to advise a greater concentration of the summer oil in dormant season, as you do above. But if you look at the data it will all evaporate in a day however much summer oil you put on whereas the old dormant oil will be on there for weeks.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: cornell oil page

But the question is- "how long do you have to hold someone under water to kill them". I suspect the heavier rates lead to about equal efficacy, but then, commercial growers aren't advised to use this stuff when trees are fully dormant in most instances anyway.

Boy H-man that is quite a comparison and a bit extreme, don't you think? I applied Volck on my trees last Dec. and it is still on! Sometimes old time sprays just work. Mrs. g

Sorry Mrs. G, that was pretty crude- must have been watching some R rated action movie before I wrote that. When I reread it I recoiled as well. When I wrote someone, I was thinking of bugs, not people. I take my war against bugs personally.

These bugs aren't mobile when the trees are dormant and oil only kills what it covers during spray. You may still see a sheen, but I don't think it's killing anything that crawls or flies.

But yeah, sometimes old sprays really work well. You only had to apply DDT once during the entire season I believe. When I started my business, the main spray authority from Cornell regretted that it had been taken off the market. The man actually thought it should still be in use.

No problem H-man! I did see my first spiderwebs on my Green Bavay Plum after spraying. You're right! The mites and small flying gnats are already out there and moving! The regular brown garden spiders are very active as well. Tis' the season! Mrs. G

Hi, nice article but very little mention about use of dormant oil to kill overwintering eggs of pest caterpillars, such as winter moth. Supposedly an application of say, Volck Oil, in December and March can take care of some of these buggers. At least that is what I'm hoping for after my weeping cherry and blueberry bushes were devastated the past few years. Also, would like to hear from anyone using plain old drugstore mineral oil instead of the more expensive "horticultural" stuff. As my grandpa used to say "erl is erl", and 98% of the makeup of these products is mineral "erl". I imagine the other 2% must be emulsifier and/or mouse milk.