The goal of the spray is to change the smell so that insects get repelled by the garlic smell and are not tempted to lay their eggs on the fruit. At the same time certain ingredients will help fight fungi, and this spray does feed the tree through the leaves.

However, just to be on the safe side (since I have not had citrus trees to try it on),
I would begin by spraying only one of the the trees or a small area of one tree early in the morning to see how the tree will react. If your trees react like my apple, pear, and plum trees, the spray will become absorbed very quickly and it almost seems like the leaves perk up; the leaves love the molasses in the spray.

Would you mind letting me know your results so that I can pass it on to other customers please.
Thank you
Marcie

CHA
Thank you for getting back to me and letting me know you got the information. I wish you success with the spray and your fruit…and please keep me informed. God bless your crop and your family.
Marcie

Question: Also, we have tried planting cherry trees here in Montana and we always seem to get bacterial canker on them we always sprayed the dormant oil,copper and whatever else we could find and it still died. We haven’t planted one since. Would your tree spray helped that?This is before we had chickens so I didn’t worry so much about what I used. Also, we had an apple tree come down with fire blight and we tried everything to save it,sprays,cutting each area with bleach on the pruning shears,still it came down with it even when we cut it to the ground it started coming back up and still had it. Would your spray helped that as well?

Answer:
Usually the problem is with the soil. 1. It could be incorrect pH, (either too acidic or alkaline). When that happens, the roots cannot absorb the necessary nutrients to feed the tree. 2. The soil might be deficient in other minerals or micronutrients. The only way to find if something is missing in your soil is to get a sample of your soil tested by your local government agricultural office. 3. The soil might be in need of having 4 to 5 inches good compost mixed with the soil to help it fight the disease.

The homemade fruit tree spray has many ingredients which fight fungus. Even without the compost tea you can really pack a punch by adding garlic and/or baking soda to the mix. (See the recipe) You would have to try the spray to see if it will help you fight the blight and/or the canker, but you would have to have a in place a spraying program where you would spray every 10 -14 days from spring to fall. However, if your soil is deficient in nutrients, the tree spray might help some, but the good it will do will not last. Think of your body. If it does not have all the nourishment it needs to stay healthy, it will become “dis-eased”.

If you go to the website http://plantsandgardeningtips.com and check the articles under “All About Soil” you will find all the information needed to check your pH, get your samples tested etc.

Question: Would steer manure in bags from a nursery be ok for compost tea? We can get a bag of manure from lowes home improvement for only $.98 cents. If not will the liquid seaweed be good enough? Thanks So Much!!!

Answer: Liquid seaweed is excellent. I have used it many times, even just liquid seaweed by itself, with very good success.

I am not familiar with the manure Lowes sells. I do know that one time I bought some cheap manure, and it was not worth much. I’m used to manure that brings results, and this cheap manure did absolutely nothing for my plants. So read the label; see what is in the bag.

I trust the stuff sold by Canadian Tire or Home Hardware or Home Depot. These three stores usually carry organically based compost and purer manure hopefully from cattle or sheep which has been fed with organically grown food as opposed to chemically fed food. It is getting more and more difficult to find “pure” organic material, so you may have to do a lot of looking around and pay a little more for your manure.

Bad manure is just as disastrous for your soil as chemical nutrients or water based nutrient … both of which do not give the soil everything it needs. Never use any manure unless it is well aged. As for the steer manure, I have not used it. If the steer have been fed with organically grown grass/hay/ whatever they eat and the manure is aged manure, then it should be fine manure for mixing with your soil.

I firmly believe that lots of good manure and good compost mixed with your soil will solve a lot of problems. Again, if the soil is not filled with proper nutrients, if your soil is not sustainable, the plants cannot be filled with the nutrition needed to make them healthy, so you will have all kinds of fungi and/or insect infestation problems.

Now for the compost tea. Personally I have rarely used it because compost tea should be produced under certain conditions only:
1. Compost tea made from manure should not be used on edible plants. Animal manure may contain E. coli bacteria which could be transferred to your fruits, vegetables and herbs if you spray them with the tea.
2. The compost made from vegetable matter used in the compost tea must have cooked and be finished compost.

So I prefer to play it safe and just stick to the other fungi fighting ingredients such as liquid seaweed, molasses, cider vinegar , baking soda, or garlic. Since you can use all of these in the homemade fruit tree spray, you can get a spray that can fight fungus and bacteria, and at the same time feed your tree through the leaves.

Good luck with your trees,
Marcie

Do you have any advise on how to use your homemade spray in a dial up dispenser that will be connected to the garden hose. I’t so nice to have constant pressure and unlimited spray when doing an orchard. I assume it can be done. would you have any input as far as the measurements and strength. the dormant oil spray is about 5%. I’m so pleased that there are people out there that care about organics and have the ability to learn from each other. Thank You. DFT
___________________________________________________
Hi Deborah
I agree with you that it is nice to have an even, constant, unlimited spray when doing an orchard; however, this being a homemade spray and never put together for commercial selling, those using it have not identified a ratio for using with a hose. You would have to experiment somewhat.

I myself have never used the garden hose to spray; therefore, I’m sorry I cannot answer your question. To me using the garden hose would add extra water to the recipe thereby diluting it. That I did not want to do. Besides, I had only 5 or 6 fruit trees and a lovely 7-foot step ladder, so I used the hand held spray pump and made sure the spray landed where it was supposed to land.

By the way, if you use the spray as suggested, you will end up with beautiful fruit since the spray gets rid of insects and/or fungi AND at the same time certain ingredients in it feed the tree through its leaves; it smells a lot better than the dormant oil spray, and it can be used all summer long because it is eco-friendly. Please let us know if you find a way to use a garden hose without diluting the formula too much. Thank you for asking.
Marcie

Hi Carmel
It makes me happy when someone finds the info provided to be of help to them. Thank you.

According to the HDRA (the garden organic organization in the United Kingdom), “ordinary garlic has anti-feedant, bacterial, fungicidal, insecticidal, nematicidal and repellent properties and is excellent to create garden sprays.”

Now according to the cancer institute, http://www.cancer.gov/cancerto.....tion/print, “garlic powder is thought to retain the same ingredients as raw garlic.” If that is the case, then I suppose you could use garlic powder.

You will need to remember that 1/8 tsp of garlic powder = 1/2 tsp of minced garlic (about 1 clove of garlic). I understand that the smell from a garlic will retain the smell a lot longer than garlic powder. In other words, the smell of a garlic clove will stay on a plant for about 1 month. I cannot vouch for the garlic powder. Since the garlic smell repels insects and that’s what you want … repel insects…you may want to use the garlic clove.

However, I have not experimented with the garlic powder as I love the smell of garlic. If you do experiment, would you mind telling us how well the spray with garlic powder repels insects. Perhaps others would like to use the garlic powder in lieu of garlic clove.

Marcie

When I first tried it on my peach tree, it was late summer and the tree had lots of peaches on it. However, the leaves were turning black and falling off the tree. I did not want to use the synthetic, poisonous spray because of the fruit, so I tried this spray as a last resort. Boy, was I in for a major surprise! The tree seemed to love the stuff.
There was no trace of molasses on the tree, no damage to the fruit, and the tree just seemed to gobble up the stuff. When I saw the result, I sprayed it again about a week later and then about 10 days later. The leaves stopped turning black but rather new leaves grew on the tree.

Mind you I did check the soil around the base of my fruit tree to see if my pH was the proper pH and I added some compost as it was obvious the tree was not getting all the nourishment it needed, but I never used poisonous spray on my trees again.

However, when I saw how well the tree was reacting to this spray, I used this spray on all my fruit trees and only that spray to do all my spraying from early spring to fall because it is environmentally friendly, and some of the ingredients fight both fungus and destructive insects without hurting the bees, and some of the ingredients feed the tree through the foliage. It’s a win-win situation

Poisonous spray is bad for the environment, bad for your health and your family’s health because some of that spray seeps down in the water table through your soil, and much of it stays in the soil and kills the good bacteria and the worms which are needed to keep the soil healthy thus destroying the soil’s nutrients. Not a good setup if you want lush nutrient-filled berries.

Suggestion: Try using this environmentally friendly spray on a small section of the strawberries, raspberries, and/or saskatoons first. Be sure to spray early in the morning when there is no wind so that the spray goes where you want it to go, and before it gets really hot so that the spray will have time to dry before the heat of the day sets in.
I’m pretty sure you will be happy with the results!

I would love to hear more about your results.
Marcie

Trees are sprayed whenever the temperature is above the freezing point and remains above the freezing point even at night. That’s when the insect community comes to life so must be destroyed.
Please read the article when to spray fruit trees which you will find under the heading Insect Control.
The article explains in detail the best time to do your spraying and in it is a link to another article about the different types of natural spray you can use. Of course I’m biased as I prefer the homemade spray detailed in the article “Homemade Fruit Tree Spray”.

If you are not getting any rough winter as we are having in Canada, and you are having mild weather, you can spray any time – especially if you are using the homemade spray. Read the articles mentioned above for more information.

Marcie