TOPIC: opening day...

tn. when i raised turkeys they could eat a five gallon bucket full of them worms..lol

TN, are those hornworms visible with the naked eye, looks like you'd have to look close or see the damage they're causing.

I've got beetles eating the leaves off my cherry and plum trees! They are copper in color with a dark spot just behind their nasty little heads. I've been spraying them with an organic spray, not sure yet if it's working. My veggie garden is doing well and I'm getting some berries even though I just planted them this year.

Back to the pests, between insects, chipmunks, birds, and coons I sometimes wonder why I even bother.

Chief, when I first read your post, " when i raised turkeys they could eat a five gallon bucket full of them worms", I read it as "you" could eat a five gallon bucket...lol

Woods i would have to roll them in flour and deep fry them if i was going to eat one...lol

woods... it is easy for sure to tell when those worms are on your tomatoes... they eat the heck out of leaves and stems and will even eat some of your fruit.

I mean they will take one whole branch and strip the leaves off completely... so you have this branch sticking out with nothing but stem left.

They leave some rather obvious large POOP's all over your lower tomato leaves and the ground too.

If you don't deal with them pretty quick, they will strip your plants of most of the (upper growth, tender leaves, stems and fruit). They don't usually go for the older growth near the bottom, but will sure wipe out the newer more tender stuff.

They are very well camo when on the plants... hard to spot them... I can do it, but have to look hard and sometimes you can look right at them and just not see them, then BOOM there he is. My wife is better at spotting them than I am... but no matter how good of a job you do at just looking for them and killing what you find, you never seem to get all of them and they continue trashing your plants and fruit.

Not now... with this LED Blacklight.. I have pretty much wiped mine out. I have not seen any new damage in a few days now.

I found no more worms last night... did find 3 more a couple nights ago... a couple of very small ones and one med size.

I will check again tonight...

TNHunter

got my buddy coming out today he is a arborist...i think my entire orchard is affected by brown fruit rot....if you all know any cure for it let me know ..it sure aint looking good....my buddy said he has had over a dozen calls for brown rot in the last two months..all this rain in the last two months is most likely the cause...

Same here Chief...

Only on my Peaches though... my early peach... that ripened mid June, not so bad, but towards the end of those, it got worse.
then my other peach that ripens first week in July... it had a running start on them and wow... I have had to dispose of over a 100 peaches off that tree.
It is amazing how fast they go down hill with that.

Between the OFM (oriental fruit moth, larvae) and the brown rot... I am starting to think twice about peaches.

They are SO GOOD when you get a good one.... but it is SO HARD to get a good one now days. Those that do get good ones seem to have to spray them constantly with stuff I would not want to eat myself, pesticides, fungicides...

TNHunter

My two peach trees that I planted last year (one year in the ground) look good, they're growing, lot's of new growth. They're not producing yet so no disappointment with rot or any of the other gazillion things that destroy the crop.

I've sprayed my cherry trees and my plum tree with an organic pesticide trying to stop the destruction caused by this nasty little beetle. Basically, they devour the leaves making them look like fish scales or thereabouts. I have dead branches on both cherry trees.

I'm done looking at the orchard and spraying this year, it's just too frustrating and depressing. Unless something changes from the past two years, I expect they will set fruit in late April to early May and then I'll get a couple more frosts that kill the fruit. My attitude at this point is if I ever get anything from any of my fruit trees, great but I'm done spending money and time on them.

My tomatoes look great TN so I think at this point, no nasties have found them.

On another note, if you recall I started a compost pile last year. Right now it has several tomato plants and at least two vines (neither of which I know what they are), likely melons of some sort. All are flowering! The crazy thing is the deer, especially the doe with fawn that harasses my dogs and I on a daily basis, doesn't eat them. They eat my newly planted ornamentals and no doubt would be in my garden if it wasn't fenced, but the plants in the compost are untouched.

I haven't been up in the woods to look at ginseng in weeks, we have a couple cool mornings forecasted, so I hope to go up and check trail cams.

Good luck with your battles.

yep. done worrying about the orchard for this year.. my buddy gave me a large list of stuff to spray on them.i said i was going to pass on that.the only spray i ever use is dormient fruit tree spray and that keeps the worms away...may go scout a woods for some roots....

Woodsrunner... last year I had a vine sprout up in my compost pile.. I thought it was a pumpkin at first... but turned out to be a spaghetti squash... I just let it grow and we got 7 nice ones off it.

Don't get too excited about volunteer tomato seedlings in the compost pile... unless you only put scraps from open pollinated (heirloom) tomatoes in your pile...

Seeds from Hybrid tomato types... are not true to type. No telling what you will get. I have tried several times to grow them out, but never really got good results.

Something like a Rutgers... would be ok. You can save seed from those and get a Rutgers.

I have around 50 tomatoes on the kitchen counter now... got to can some/freeze some tonight.

My sweet corn is looking really good too... a few more days and we will be harvesting some.

TNHunter

its the 16 th of july and so far ive had 13 and 3/4 inches of rain this month...guess it beats no rain..i guess.