Integrated Pest Management

A common question that we get from our customers involves spraying our crops. There is a lot of decision making involved in deciding when we spray and the quantity of agricultural chemicals that we will put on our crops. There is a scientific process that occurs before any decisions are made - read more to find out how we make these decisions on a daily basis.

All of our orchards are scouted, twice a week by a trained individual looking for the presence of insects, mildew and potentially scab in our crops. We have several weather stations on the farm that register the weather patterns in our area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our “scouts” use this information to monitor insect development. Heat and precipitation can play a large role in decision making for chemical use. For example, if insect eggs are detected, they are monitored regularly. We use information from the weather station, combined with information from the “scout” to determine if chemical use is necessary. The “scout” will tell us the number of good insects present in ratio to the number of bad insects. We want to keep good insects in our orchards. We select our pesticide use based on this information. We want to use as few chemicals in our orchards as possible. Fifteen years ago, we sprayed some of our crops every 10 days regardless. Today, we use the information from the “scout”, before we make any decisions regarding chemical use.