How to Starve Orchard Pests

[00:00:00]Hi friends, I wanted to give you an example of um how I approach managing insects just on a personal use basis. So, I have a small uh homestead orchard.

[00:00:12]Um I don't know exactly, around let's say around 100 fruit trees, many of which I just planted this spring.

[00:00:17]And the seedlings that I got from the nursery, um as you might expect, have some insect susceptibility because of the nitrogen load that they got in the nursery that is still accumulating and carrying over.

[00:00:29]So, roughly a week, I'd say now at this point it's about 2 weeks ago, um I went out there and there were problems with uh some small leaf hoppers. There were leaf hoppers out there.

[00:00:42]And also, particularly on the apple trees, uh there was a load of aphids. Um aphids were completely covering some of the new shoot growth.

[00:00:53]So, my approach to this was I put on a foliar application of PhotoMag and Rejuvenate.

[00:01:09]And then, for the kicks of it, because I want these plants to be really healthy and robust generally, um it wasn't particularly needed for those two particular insects, but I also added a a shot of Pinyon to the mix.

[00:01:24]And I know you can have these effects, the effects that I saw, without the Pinyon application, just with the PhotoMag and the Rejuvenate application.

[00:01:30]So, anyway, I put on this foliar application, and uh single application, and I'm doing a small backpack sprayer, but just standard label rates, nothing out of the ordinary.

[00:01:42]And within 24 hours, um about 70% of the aphids were dead.

[00:01:48]Within 48 hours, 100% of the aphids were dead.

[00:01:51]The leaf hopper pressure uh was greatly reduced, but they were still present. There were still a small amount out there, but not very many.

[00:01:58]So, I then went back and I repeated this exact same application about 5 days after the first application, and at that point the leaf hopper pressure pretty much disappeared.

[00:02:11]But then, around 4 or 5 days ago, something like that, Japanese beetles emerge from dormancy from winter dormancy, and Japanese beetle pressure looks like it's going to be an a a season for intense Japanese beetle pressure in this part of the world. Uh we have Japanese beetles everywhere, very intense. So, they they're more mature trees that have been exposed and have been managed that are being managed with our nutrition management system are completely being ignored and left alone. We have no Japanese beetles there at all, which has been our historical experience.

[00:02:45]And so, for these new seedlings, I wanted an application that would go after the Japanese beetles.

[00:02:53]So, we know that many of the beetle family, whether they're piercing uh beetles or whether they're chewing beetles, they they tend to be a bit more robust, and it takes a bit more to solve that problem than it does for some of for something like the aphids. Aphids are really easy to solve. I did I did a follow-up application with an application of Photomag and Rebound Boron and Holocal.

[00:03:30]I did a fairly high dose of the Rebound Boron. I think it's about two times the regular application rate.

[00:03:37]And Holocal, um I put on also at a very high dose.

[00:03:45]And the reason for these, I've I've talked about this in the past, but um the Rebound Boron, unlike any other Boron source that I'm aware of actually gets into the plant, mobilizes around very, very quickly wherever the plant needs it most. Foliar applications of Boron just stay on the leaf surface wherever they land.

[00:04:04]Uh and I put on this high dose of Boron that could conceivably have caused toxicities in sensitive plants. Again, I don't know what these plants' history are, what their nutrition management was like. So, I wanted to just provide some buffer and some insurance. So, I put on a high dose of calcium as well to buffer out the Rebound Boron.

[00:04:24]So, I put on this application 24 hours ago, yesterday morning, and as of this morning, when I was doing my crop scouting, the Japanese beetles are gone.

[00:04:38]Yesterday, I could find hundreds.

[00:04:40]Today, I found three.

[00:04:43]So, there's been a this dramatic, almost immediate reduction in Japanese beetle pressure as a result of this application getting into the leaf. Now, obviously, none of these materials are insecticides, but what happens is they change the plants' internal physiology, and they change the plants' biochemical profile, the the carbohydrate composition, the amino acid and peptide composition, so that those plants become unpalatable to the Japanese beetles. Did we kill them? I didn't see any dead beetles. I kind of doubt it.

[00:05:19]But, they moved on to more palatable pastures, and they no longer wanted to utilize those tree seedlings as a food source.

[00:05:29]So, this is uh a concrete illustration. Now, there is something worth pointing out here. I pulled the Rejuvenate out of this mix, but if I had not made those two previous applications that had had carbohydrates in them, um we've had a lot of heat here last couple of weeks, which uh increases the carbohydrate need. I would have included Rejuvenate in this mix as well to add some carbohydrates because uh you need a carbohydrate dose to go with the boron and with the magnesium, everything that's in the Photo Mag to trigger that rapid shift of carbohydrates and various protein forms.

[00:06:08]So, that's the practical application.

[00:06:11]This is what I did on uh my own personal orchard with an immediate effect and the challenge, I know there's many people who watch from international um sources, people who don't have access to AEA products, but and I want to be clear that you should expect your mileage is going to vary quite substantially uh because there's a lot of engineering that has gone into the Photo Mag and the Rebound Boron, the Holo Cal, but particularly Rebound Boron and Photo Mag, Holo Cal as well for that matter.

[00:06:41]Um, there's just a two as far as I'm aware there are not really other trace minerals in the marketplace that mobilize inside the plant and move around wherever the plant needs them as rapidly as these elements do. So, if you try to replicate this on your own, um you should just have the expectation that your you may not get the exact same results in the same amount of time. It may require repeat applications. It may require um more frequent applications. So, just something for you to be aware of.