04/11/05 Cooler weather, pick your window

There were concerns among the region's fruit growers that the warmer than usual weather early last month forced the speeding up of pest control methods. The weather patterns changed two weeks ago to cooler conditions. But Harold Schell, Horticultural Manager for Chelan Fruit Company, says the change in weather brought on some different concerns. SCHELL: The difficulty that we've had with the cooler weather that did arrive was along with that, there was some moisture as well as some windier conditions, and it made it kind of difficult for a lot of people to get these early sprays on. They kind of had to pick and choose their window of opportunity, sort of speak, in order to apply the products that were on these delayed dormant sprays there were going on. And it has been that time when the baseline delayed dormants, including spray oil for several insect egg varieties and the organophosphate Lohrsban to control chewing and sucking insects and scale, has been applied, weather permitting that is. Schell calls it the cornerstone for the season-long spray program, and he says the next layer of pest control is scheduled sometime within the next two weeks. SCHELL: Shortly, we'll be looking at some tight clusters sprays for more or less leaf feeds and those sorts of things. There may be some test complex issues then that we may have to deal with. The ones that are first and foremost in our minds for the coming growing season would be coddling moth control as well as leafroller control, and that comes about a little later after bloom.