dormant oil spray substitute

[peppero]

has anyone successfully used a substitute for the dormant oil spray on fruit trees, perhaps like fels naptha soap or murphys oil soap? jon

[feldon30]

What type of fruit are you growing? What resistances (if any) do the root stock have?

[peppero]

i have peaches and one apple and i am sorry to say i dont remember what kind they are. i just have a lot of problems with worms in the fruit. jon

[FarmerShawn]

I used to reluctantly use a fruit tree spray to try to get edible, worm-free or reduced-worm apples, until a couple of years ago, I discovered Surround, which is just a wettable, finely ground clay. It apparently confuses the pests by hiding the vegetation under a disguise of white dust, and leads to, I think the blurb says, "excessive grooming" or something like that. Anyway, it makes the buggers uncomfortable enough to mostly leave my stuff alone. For the last two years I have used it exclusively, and have had the best apples I have ever had. It works a bit on cucumber beetles, but the cucurbits grow so fast, you'd need to respray about every other day to stay ahead of them. But on the apple trees, and my one grape vine, I spray a couple of times early on, then once the film is built up, and depending on how much rain comes, I only spray again rarely, if at all.
I got mine from Fedco, and will probably continue to use it forever, though it does make the trees look a bit ghostly. The bottom line is that I get edible fruit, with no chemicals involved.

[Tracydr]

What about neem oil or BT?

[feldon30]

Neem Oil is pretty much a contact killer. You'd have to be out there every day. BT probably doesn't have a thick enough coating on the fruit to kill any caterpillars or fruitworms.

I like the idea of Surround.