Thanks for your valuable time this week . I am looking for strategies to deal with plum curculio . We have 6 peach and 2 nectarine trees spread out over an acre and a half . The damage has been consistent since season one . We have free range chickens and remove all fallen fruit . To no avail . Any tips would be much appreciated .

wayne stephen wrote:Thanks for your valuable time this week . I am looking for strategies to deal with plum curculio . We have 6 peach and 2 nectarine trees spread out over an acre and a half . The damage has been consistent since season one . We have free range chickens and remove all fallen fruit . To no avail . Any tips would be much appreciated .

Wayne, curculio is an insect we just live with. I agree there can be a WIDE range of damage. Stone fruit are more attractive to it (plum, peach). Changing the design of the orchard has solved a lot of problems, by design. NAP. Trios. Make each fruit tree an island onto itself. Never 2 plum trees should touch. Never 2 peach trees should touch... Apply this logic and it solves a lot. Trios means the same species of fruit only re- appears every 3 trees, at most, and should not be the same cultivar. So much is solved by design. Trios explained in film or on our youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3riW_yiCN5E&list=UUhZtQMP9Enu3VaoPxCDQ3fg

Thank you Stefan . I had already come to the conclusion peaches are not the best tree for my region . Apples , pears , pawpaws do much better . So many variables in the curculios life cycle that make a blanket fix near impossible . Thanks again .

wayne stephen wrote:Thank you Stefan . I had already come to the conclusion peaches are not the best tree for my region . Apples , pears , pawpaws do much better . So many variables in the curculios life cycle that make a blanket fix near impossible . Thanks again .

Good for you Wayne you are observing what is most SUITABLE instead of what you WANT for your site. Don't try to fight nature too hard it tends to have a lot of perseverance.

Years ago when I lived in SW GA for 10 years, I had good luck with plum curculio with these strategies in my small mixed fruit orchard:
- Intensive chickens.....we were selling eggs most of the time and ran 50-75 hens in about half an acre of trees, fenced in...enough to scratch much of the ground bare. We would throw in truckloads of mulch of all sorts. No fallen fruit would sit for even an hour.
-Early varieties.....the bugs simply have less time to work on them.

This practice gave me ~75% worm free fruit on the early plums and peaches. Everybody that knew about it was surprised, including the UGA fruit specialist who made a special trip to see it.....