Peach Tree Borer - Twist Tie Solution

Unlike our apples and pears our stone fruits ( plums, apricots, peaches, nectarines) are not organic. However, whenever possible, we use organic solutions to control disease and insect problems.

A new solution we are using is mating disruption to control the greater and lesser peach tree borer. These twist ties release a pheromone that disrupts the pheromone released by the female insect thus confusing the male.  No mating means no egg laying in the bark of the tree meaning no borers killing the branch or tree.

This is one of the few organic allowed solutions that work as well or almost as well as conventional controls.

Birds Nest

Jean and I we out thinning apples a few days ago, not a lot of apples this season, but that's another story.  We often come across birds nests in our apple trees, robins, sparrows and swallows.  But we came across this nest, one we have never seen before.  Often bird nests rest on branches in the tree but this one was woven around a  Y shaped branch with no bottom support with what looked like spider webbing and the body had wasp nest paper incorporated into the nest.   At the time we initially saw the nest it had two eggs, when we went back to take an image of the nest it had one more egg plus a cow bird egg.  Cow birds parasitize the nests of other birds to get the mother to raise the cow bird's offspring. Since the cow bird offspring grows quickly it often out competes the host bird's offspring.

We did some research to identify the nest and eggs, not wanting to harass the mother. Our best guess is that it is a Red-Eyed Vireo .  Most of the pieces fit including the use of wasp paper in the nest.  One item that didn't fit is their preference to nest in forest canopies.  I guess if you stretch the definition of forest canopies nesting at five feet in a couple of acres of six foot trees would qualify.   If you think I have it wrong with the identification please let us know.

Late Winter Pruning

One of our goals this season is to prune all the fruit trees at our orchard. We have never been able to do this is the past and it will take us about three seasons of pruning all the trees each season to get the trees back into proper form. Our primary goal is to prune for air circulation anticipating that this will help with some of the problems we have with fruit quality since we began our organic practices.

The image is an easy puzzle that took me way too long to figure out. Some of the trees near the wood line have chewing damage. The damage looks like a pruning cut at 45 degrees; the 45 degree clue usually means rabbits. But the damage was as high as my chest, which didn't make sense. Of course the reason the damage was so high was because for much of the winter we had 2 feet of snow with 3 foot drifts. I'd like to say I realized this in a matter of seconds but minutes are more honest.

Even with the damage it's great to have rabbits on the property after their disappearance for so many years in the 1990s.