Articles

Home Orchards: Table 4.7. Pesticide Recommendations for Apples

The following spray schedule will provide desirable disease and insect control during normal seasons.

Save for later Print

Updated:

March 23, 2023

Skip to the end of the images gallery

Home Orchards: Table 4.7. Pesticide Recommendations for Apples

Skip to the beginning of the images gallery

If the weather is dry, the time between spray applications can be increased to 21 days; if the weather is wet, sprays should be applied every 10 to 14 days. To avoid harming bees, do not use an insecticide in sprays applied during the bloom period. Due to a wide array of various products containing the same active ingredient for insecticide recommendations, when appropriate, the active ingredient is listed instead of the name of formulated product. Follow all instructions and application rates listed on pesticide labels.

CAUTION: Broad-spectrum insecticides (those with a large number of pests listed on the label) have significant potential to be harmful to non-target organisms such as bees and other beneficial or predatory insects.

Time to Spray	Suggested Materials^a	Pests to be controlled
Green Tip - when leaves are 1/4 inch long	Oil plus Copper	Scales, mite eggs aphids, scab, powdery mildew^b
Prepink - first pink color of flower buds^c	GPProduct mix, or Captan 50WP	Scab, aphids, caterpillars, scales, rust, powdery mildew
Pink - just before blossoms open^c	Same materials as Prepink plus Safer Soap^c	Scab, rust, powdery mildew, aphids, scales
Petal Fall - 90% of flower petals off^c	Captan plus imidacloprid plus esfenvalerate or Surround plus CM granulosis virus	Scab, rust, powdery mildew, curulio, caterpillars, oriental fruit moth, European apple sawfly
1--14 days after petal fall^c	GPProduct mix, or Captan plus Spinosad, plus Last Call mating disruption, plus CM granulosis virus	Scab, rust, powdery mildew leafrollers, codling moth, oriental fruit moth
14 days later^c,d,e	GPProduct mix, or Captan 50WP plus Spinosad, plus Surround, or Safer Soap^c, or summer oil^e Calcium chloride	Summer rots, sooty blotch, flyspeck, scab, caterpillars, aphids, Corking, bitter pit of apple
Continue applications on^c,d,e 10- t 14-day interval until harvest. Read the label as to the preharvest interval of when to stop spraying.	Same materials as last spray.	Scab, summer rots, sooty blotch, flyspeck, scab, apple maggots, mites, worms

Notes

a. Match pesticide efficacy against problem pests before selecting spray materials (see Tables 4.5 and 4.6)
b. Where powdery mildew is a problem, add wettable sulfur in prepink through late-June sprays. Do not apply sulfur if the temperature is predicted to be 80°F or higher on the day of application.
c. Safer Soap will probably russet fruit.
d. If cork spot or bitter pit is a problem, the addition of calcium chloride can help reduce their occurence.
e. Summer oil can not be used 14 days before and after captan application or fruit russeting will occur.

Agenda

Authors