Noogy I feel your pain. We have been inundated with rain as well. A day or two off, then three days of rain, drizzle and thunderstorms at night. My plums are in fine shape this year, with no major drop yet, except for the fruit that was not pollinated. My trees will definitely be netted this year. Our PC are not due here until the second week in June. Given more rain preditions I know I'll be spraying again within two weeks. do you use a sticker spreader? Mrs. G

Yup. I don't recall what it is. It's my 1st year with stone fruit so I've started spraying. What do you use? My north star cherries are beautiful and are plumping up so I'm thinking surround since it''s only 3 weeks away from harvest and I might do the same for the plums. It looks like it's drying up for us. I have about 24 plums on my shiro, superior and about 10 satsumas. It looks like I have pollination covered, I have to keep an eye out for borers.

I've heard that Surround is not a good choice for cherries because it's hard to wash off each cherry before you eat.

I have cherries. My main problem is birds so netting is what I need. I don't have plum fruiting yet. If I spray plum, I'll use Triazicide but some have found it not as effective as permethrin.

Noogy, when the plums are yellowing it means the PC worm got to the seed. The adults are finished doing their damage so there isn't any reason to spray for them, just collect any yellowed fruits on tree or on ground to limit #'s of future PCs.

At this point PC spray season is over and we are into OFM season. Depending on how bad your OFM is you will need to lay down something for them. I use spinosad. There should be no reason to spray cherries now; Surround is a pain to wash off so I would avoid it just to avoid the hassle. I have been using Surround on my peaches this time of year, the stinkbugs are all in the peaches at this point and I want to slow them down.

Scott

Noogs, the spray combo I use throughout the growing season is Triazicide, mixed with Captan and Immunox. I use bonides' Turbo 'Sticker-Spreader' in the mix as well, to make sure heavy rains don't wash the spray off of the fruit, leaves and tree more quickly. I spray a little later in the season with Monterey Fungi fighter. Starting in Nov. around thanksgiving, I will spray a fixed copper to start the process off making sure my peaches do not get peach leaf curl. It really works. My peaches look so healthy this year. I am going on my sixth year of growing stone fruit and pomme fruit. It is a very different animal than soft 'berry' fruits. By the way I wouldn't 'watch' for borer, as once you see them the damage is probably done. I lost a plum and nectarine tree to borer, while learning about a decent spray schedule. Borers are really not an insect you want, they can be devasting. I came to love triazicide when it came to borers, pc, and ofm. I also learned that fungi is just as damaging if not more. Bacterial canker is my current foe. Through lack of knowledge of what to spray, I lost trees, had every fungus known to man. I have corrected most of it. Then Mother Nature has her own plan for all of our orchards. We do what we can. . . that said, 'no spray, no fruit'. Just my humble opinion from a newbie orchardist.
Mrs. G