hi everybody i'm gary i've been in the horticulture industry as a grower for
a long time over 40 years so i've gotten a lot of experience and i want to pass
along some of it today right now it's late winter so it's time to apply dormant spray
on the fruit trees there's always the potential of insects and mites and disease pathogens that
can be overwintering on your fruit trees so i highly recommend that you apply a dormant
spray for a clean healthy start in the spring the spray solution i'm going to be using today is a
combination of horticultural oil and liquid copper fungicide i'm going to mix these two
together in the spray tank with water keep it well agitated as i'm spraying both of these products
are organic so you can use them on organic or non-organic crops and they can be used on
fruit trees small fruits ornamentals any plants that are listed on the label
now the horticultural oil will control insects like aphids and scales are common
and a host of other insects it also does mites spider mites blister mites that sort of thing
and it does uh actually do uh control on powdery mildew that's why it's listed as an
insecticide miticide fungicide because of the powdery mildew control but we're adding the
liquid copper fungicide because that's going to take care of and control a whole lot of diseases
and you think about anthracnose fire blight scab and most notably the peach leaf curl because
peach leaf curl can only be controlled at this stage of the game when it's dormant
once it leafs out there's really nothing you can do for it so this is a good preventative
on all of these things now the time to apply is when the trees are fully dormant and they should
be well hydrated weather conditions ideally it should be between 40 and 70 degrees fahrenheit
you want light calm winds id ideally or light winds are okay and as sunny as possible that
way everything will dry quickly because once it's dry then it's doing its job you want to apply this
two or three times during the dormant season uh we're starting right now it's late winter
before buds are swollen at all you don't want any bud swelling you want to apply it
in the dormant stage and then you're going to do a follow-up in the fall after leaf drop so
a good way to look at it is after thanksgiving that's kind of your final process that you need
to do to before winter sets in and you want to do it late winter like now say between valentine's
day and the first of march now there's an option for a third application that that is certainly
would be fine to do it would be in between those two it would be basically in january and it's
not always easy to have the correct weather conditions for that so that one i just list
is optional it's really critical to do it late winter and follow up after leaf drop in the fall
the thing that you need to do to be ready to spray the place to start is you always read the labels
first the labels are going to give you the rate of the chemicals to mix in with the water it's
going to give you the rei the re-entry interval which will be in this case once it is dry on the
plants it's safe to re-enter for you and your pets and anybody involved and also it will tell you the
personal protective equipment you'll need in this case we've got gloves got safety goggles
and you want to basically don't have any exposed skin you want to have long sleeves pants to the
to your feet and with boots on or shoes anyway just to be safe it can cause skin irritation
so you want to take all that into account and then you'll need a some type of spray equipment in this
case we only have a few trees we've just got a small pump up sprayer you can also use a hose end
sprayer for bigger trees uh so you're not wearing your arm out pumping it up all the time you can
even put a a small sprayer on an atv and hook it to the battery and if you've got a lot of ground
to cover so there you've got a lot of options on that uh the important thing is to add some water
mix your chemicals in add more water get it really well agitated and keep the agitation when you
are spraying you don't have to do it constantly but you don't want it setting
for a little bit and then pick it up without shaking it some and so then i guess what we're
ready for is to actually show you um the type of spray that you want because
obviously you don't want to stream but you don't want high mist either
you want the droplets to be coarse enough that the wind won't be affecting it that much if there is
a slight wind and also to get good complete coverage that's the key this stuff works by
making good coverage good contact and so you have to have a complete spray when you do it okay we're
ready for spring now we'll follow up in the late fall after leaf drop with another application
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