Rhode Island Apple IPM
April 25, 2011: Recorded Apple Pest Message in Print

April 25, 2011
Hi Fruit Growers,
Sorry I've been slow to send you messages. Lately I've been busy
organizing and then releasing a parasite to control winter moth with
Joe Elkinton from UMass. On Friday we released 750 Cyzenis albican
flies at Goddard Park in Warwick. There are plenty of winter moth
larvae at Goddard Park to hopefully establish a Rhode Island
population of parasites. My hope is that in a few years we won't be
plagued by winter moths!

I'm hoping that most of you applied a fungicide today or yesterday to
protect against apple scab. We have soared into the critical time to
control apple scab and wet weather is predicted for the next few days.
If you applied a fungicide before the rain on Saturday, I'm afraid a
good portion of the fungicide would have been washed off. So even if
you sprayed on Friday, this looming apple scab infection period could
very well cause you trouble if you didn't spray 4/24 or 4/25.

Orchard Radar is not up and running yet, unfortunately. Some of the
similar information can be obtained from the New York, NEWA website:
http://newa.cornell.edu/
Choose apples and then put in either Providence or Newport for the
weather station. These are listed after all the New York sites are
listed. It gives a lot of good information, but I am looking forward
to Orchard Radar to start.

European red mite eggs generally start hatching around McIntosh tight
cluster, so they should start hatching very soon. Hopefully many of
you included oil sprays with your fungicide sprays of 4/24 or 4/25.
The timing would be perfect! For those of you using Captan now, don't
also spray oil. You need to keep Captan applications at least 7 days
away from oil applications.