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Fatty Acid Knockdown (PDF of archived thread)
So to kick start this discussion again, what do the pear growers out there do re: FAK sprays and pear sensitivity? We have found our pears tend to get leaf burn pretty easily above 0.5% Neem, so I tend ease up with the Neem in that part of the orchard (we planted our pears with many apples, so that block just doesn’t ever get the full rate of Neem — file that under “it would have been nice to know!”).
However, 0.25% Neem is not so much as a “knockdown” as it is a “lunch” for the microbial community (both the good LMB’s and the baddies we do not want).
Leaf burn going into the winter is probably ok…but gosh if my loving kindness mantras just do not want to burn our tree’s leaves if we do not need to. 😉 Maybe I just need to think about it similar to some good rejuvenative pruning.
Anyways, I’m curious what other pear growers do for their fall and/or spring FAK sprays.
As I sprayed out FAK this week, I realized there are some related questions.
Our apple trees were at about 90% leaf fall here in mid-Maryland zone 7a, mostly due to our issues with ELF (Every Leaf Fungus, i.e., we seem to have a mix of the regular contenders of FELS, Alternaria, and perhaps I suspect Marssonina). In addition, the cherries have dropped their leaves. So spraying these with FAK is an easy decision. However, for the late ripening apples (Grannies and Goldrush for us), they are still on the trees despite the early leaf drop.
I assume FAK has no effect on the ripening fruit?
Would a mineral clean up spray (such as Copper, i.e., Cueva, or wettable Sulfur) have any effect on ripening fruit?
Our peaches and apricots have their leaves, in addition to the previously mentioned pears. Running the neem up to 2% I suspect is going to burn some leaves. So as a similar question to the pears, do you folks just spray your FAK on your prunus that have their leaves? Or are you waiting until later in the season? I find the longer we wait for spray that FAK, the harder it is to follow up with a LMB spray before it gets to cold for the LMBs to work.
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