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Monday, August 4, 2014
Integrated Pest Management
We often get asked the question…
Are you an Organic Orchard?
Simple answer is no – we are not an organic orchard. However, we do practice IPM - Integrated Pest Management. By watching degree days and scouting for bugs and scab we are able to spray our orchard at a minimum. Trust me – if we don’t HAVE to spray to give you all good, delicious apples we definitely would not!
Here are just a few of the things we use to scout for bugs!
The white tent looking thing in the middle of the trees has sticky paper on it. It’s actually a Pheromone traps which is used to capture male moths for monitoring and setting biofix, which is the time of first flight for codling moth. The codling moths land on it and get stuck to it. We daily check the traps and count how many codling moths have landed. If the number gets above the threshold IPM experts recommend within a certain time period it’s time to spray. If the number is less than that - no spray- yeah!
Click on ‘Codling moth’ right here if you want to see pictures of why we don’t want these in our apples! Yuck! (too gross for me to put an image on the blog!)
This sticky red ball is an apple maggot trap. The concept is the same as the pheromone traps for the codling moth. We check the trap daily and count the flies (which lay eggs in the fruit which then grow into maggots) stuck to it. If the number is above the threshold…it’s time to spray. If the number is less than that - no spray- yeah!
Click on ‘Apple Maggot’ to see pictures of what these do to the apples. Also too gross for me to put an image on here… yuck!
Frank, Diane and Jared are very good at scouting for these pests and we’ve managed to keep the infestation in our orchard to a minimum so far.
Are you an Organic Orchard?
Simple answer is no – we are not an organic orchard. However, we do practice IPM - Integrated Pest Management. By watching degree days and scouting for bugs and scab we are able to spray our orchard at a minimum. Trust me – if we don’t HAVE to spray to give you all good, delicious apples we definitely would not!
Here are just a few of the things we use to scout for bugs!
The white tent looking thing in the middle of the trees has sticky paper on it. It’s actually a Pheromone traps which is used to capture male moths for monitoring and setting biofix, which is the time of first flight for codling moth. The codling moths land on it and get stuck to it. We daily check the traps and count how many codling moths have landed. If the number gets above the threshold IPM experts recommend within a certain time period it’s time to spray. If the number is less than that - no spray- yeah!
Click on ‘Codling moth’ right here if you want to see pictures of why we don’t want these in our apples! Yuck! (too gross for me to put an image on the blog!)
This sticky red ball is an apple maggot trap. The concept is the same as the pheromone traps for the codling moth. We check the trap daily and count the flies (which lay eggs in the fruit which then grow into maggots) stuck to it. If the number is above the threshold…it’s time to spray. If the number is less than that - no spray- yeah!
Click on ‘Apple Maggot’ to see pictures of what these do to the apples. Also too gross for me to put an image on here… yuck!
Frank, Diane and Jared are very good at scouting for these pests and we’ve managed to keep the infestation in our orchard to a minimum so far.
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1 comments:
That's good to know. However, I am not willing to eat an apple that has been sprayed. Will continue to buy organic.
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