Today we found 1% of our nut clusters with an active pecan nut casebearer larva feeding on young nuts. The weather forecast has a 20 to 40% chance of rain through Sunday but in this heat the casebearer population will increase rapidly. To protect our below- average crop from serious nut loss, we are planning on making a pesticide application starting tomorrow morning. We will be using Lorsban insecticide and Headline fungicide.
If you plan on spraying your trees this week, start at dawn and shut down when temperatures hit 85 degrees F. Also, check out weather forecast predictions using the National Weather Service website. By typing in your local city and state you can get a local forecast that includes an hourly prediction of temperature and wind speed. Tomorrow it looks like we will get only about 3-4 hours to spray with our airblast sprayer. Wind gusts up to 22 mph are predicted starting at 10 am and the temperature will hit 85 degrees by noon. On Friday, the winds are supposed to die down but the temperature will still hit 85 by noon.