Flowers turn into fruit with the help of bees. The enemy of this process is rainy days which keep the bees nice and cosy in their hives huddled up with their hive mates and disease. Moisture helps germinate disease spores such as peach leaf curl and botrytis. Both of these can take out the flower and its potential to produce fruit. So what can I do? Last week I applied the first 'coat' of a copper fungicide called Nordox. This is approved for organic growers. I used one pound per acre, the recommended amount is five pounds. Because we have many varieties the optimum time to spray is spread out ove four weeks. If I sprayed five pound four times that would be too much. So I will spray every week at the lower rate.
This rainy period is not good and the sprays are pretty much all I can do to protect the flowers. We need a few weeks of nice warm weather with no rain... work on that for me please.