Do You Use Chemical Sprays on Your Fruit?

[FB.]

Do you spray your fruit trees, bushes or plants?
Any types of fruit count - ranging from strawberries, gooseberries, currants, all the way up to big fruit trees.

Thanks,
FB

[witchwoo]

not sure if you want reply's as well, but i do not spray, my reasoning being is they have to cope with every thing nature throws at them, as i have a small garden if they do not cope then they are not the ideal for me, plus i need them to be as strong as poss and i feel that a strong plant can cope with a few problems. i have 4 apple, 1 pear, 1 cherry, strawberry's, raspberrys, gooseberry, black current

[scarey55]

The only thing I spray against is peach leaf curl. I only do it once a year and pick off the odd affected leaves but I fear the tree would die otherwise.

[northepaul]

I have to come clean, I did spray my damson because I was fighting a loosing battle against plum mealybugs. I tried organic methods first, (ie donned rubber gloves and squished them, then sprayed with washing up liquid and oil.) but it just didnt work, and the tree was getting weaker, looking very sad. I figured that as it is not producing fruit this year, it would be better to at least have a live tree, than an organic dead tree.

[vicky]

I don't spray, partly as I gyo to get organic stuff I can't afford in the shops and partly cos I'm lazy and am not bothered if I get some dodgy fruit!

[chris]

No spraying here, regardless (I've just lost an apricot I think, from peach leaf curl). I've a toddler, and a pregnant wife - I'd rather loose some fruit [which we have] and have chemical free produce.

[starloc]

I spray anthing thats necessary, but i dont use any `real` pesticides outdoors , i do use strong pesticides on the indoor plants if necessary

Outdoor plants its realy only things like epsom salts, potassium nitrate and very occasionaly in very controlled way i some times use things like cytokinin and gibberelic acid for manipulating the plants and dithane , copper supphate and captan for things like leaf curl etc

If i need to to save a plant i do use neem, sunflower oil and limonene ( sometimes chilli powder ) as a pesticide but i prefer to let insects eat each other

A few times ive used Dipel to get shut of plagues of caterpillars

[Alison]

Don't spray, I grow my own so that I don't consume things that have been sprayed to death so would be defeating the object if I did. Even on lottie scale it's not that difficult to deal with things in other ways and I get good yields.