I've seen it. It'll make the pears look a little lumpy. Research I read in the past shows that the eggs almost never survive (the hard/growing peach crushes them). Although still possible. Its more cosmetic then anything.

You are way ahead of me. My Seckel/Harrow Sweet are still flowering. My guess is PC will be hitting hard and heavy this year with not much fruit around.

I suspect that with the Kieffer, there'll be stones in those lumps.

My Seckel is done flowering and there was plenty of bloom, but I'm not seeing any fruit set on the tree. I thought Seckel was pretty self-fertile.

But there haven't been bees active.

Could be bees...meant pear above, not peach...oops. Could be pollination. What I have seen on my seckel is something EATING the blossoms... I have Seckel and Harrow Sweet ...couple of seedlings and i ordered a couple Bartletts that should be here soon. I have had a horrible problem with pear blister mites int he past, but this year everything looks good so far...dormant spray seems to have fixed it.

Alas, dormant spray didn't fix the blister mites here.

ltilton, did you spray lime-sulphur for mites when the buds were swelled and close to popping? Thats worked every time for me.

Re: PC in pears, my Surround on the other fruits drove them to the pears and now I have to spray the pears as well.

Scott

Scottsmith - I used copper mixed with dormant oil..

This post was edited by ltilton on Sun, May 25, 14 at 9:04

I don't think copper is particularly effective against PLBM. Next spring use lime-sulphur with dormant oil. You can also spray a mild dose of it now, read the label for growing season rates. Or use regular sulphur not lime sulphur. I have successfully used sulphur to wipe out infections I missed in the dormant spray.

Scott

I do have regular sulphur.

What I'd really like to know is what kind of pest chews at the base of the just-pollinated pearlet stems, killing the fruits. Can I blame this on the PCs? I haven't seen any on such young fruits, or any other kind of pest, just the place where they chewed.

My Euro pears were the only thing PC hit for a while this spring (about 1.5 weeks ago). I sprayed with everything with Surround last weekend. Then, in the last few days, it looks like PC has hit some of the apples (William's Pride and Liberty seem much worse hit than others) and Tomcot Apricots (which are huge compared to everything else- I'm not sure how they escaped the initial hits). Nothing on the peach or plums yet.

I'm re-applying Surround today. I'm not sure what people normally do when they get a day of heavy rain followed by off-and-on rain for 3 days. I waited for a sunny day with a low chance of rain to reapply, but maybe I should have re-sprayed earlier, even if it was going to get washed off soon.

What is PC?

plum curculio

Plum Curlico. It leaves a crescent-shaped mark on the fruit where the egg was laid.

Thanks ltiton and bob_z6. An acronism (sp) without posting what it is isn't helpful for newbies like me. Can the fruit survive or is it toast?

Depends on the fruit. Apples are often just scarred. Pears can survive, but sometimes the wound generates stone cells.

In stone fruits, however, the damage is greater. The fruits often drop from the tree before they are ripe, or the worm ruins the fruit by tunneling into it and turning it rotten.

A bad infestation can ruin every fruit on a tree.

If PC gets into a plum and the plum aborts does the PC still get to complete its life cycle and multiply?

Apparently that's how they do it. The larva crawls out and pupates in the soil.

Seems to me that if it's true that the larvae don't live in apples and pears because the fruit is too hard, then w/o stone fruit around, they'd just die out in the area. But this doesn't seem to happen.

I checked over the Kieffer pears today. Not a single fruit is sound. Quite a few have holes chewed in them, like half a fruitlet eaten away.

Squished one curc and sprayed the tree with permethrin on the chance of killing any others that might still be there.

I've bagged the Seckels, later and much smaller. Whether this works ...