Pest Management

The dry summers and cold winters of central Washington lead to fewer pests and diseases of tree fruits than in many other areas, making this region particularly well-suited for organic fruit production.  Yet key long-time problems persist, while new pests and diseases such as Spotted Wing Drosophila and Little Cherry Virus continually arrive. Key challenges for Washington organic fruit growers include codling moth, pear psylla, powdery mildew, and Spotted Wing Drosophila.

Insect & Mite Pests

Resources

Presentations

• Habitat modification and conservation of biological control in organic orchards. Unruh
• Organic Codling Moth management in Washington State and the world, A. Knight, USDA
• Building a stable IPM System for Western Orchards. The report for the first year of the multi-tactic pheromone-based pest management project, a follow-up to the Areawide Mating Disruption projects from the late 1990’s.
• Organic Tree Fruit Management in the West. New concepts and techniques are featured in Organic Tree Fruit Pest Management in the West: Bringing New Science to Old Problems. The presentations from this symposium are available on-line here.
• Peshastin Creek Areawide Organic project. Using areawide pest management in conjunction with organic insect pest control techniques in pears.
• Wenatchee Valley Pear IPM Project, 1999-2001, Lessons from soft management programs, T. Alway
• Using Mulches to improve efficacy and persistence of insect specific nematodes for control of overwintering Codling moth, L. Lacey et al.

Vertebrate Pests

• Vole populations, tree fruit orchard, and living mulches, T. P. Sullivan, CSANR, 2006, 36pp
• Cover crops influence meadow vole presence in organic orchards. M. Wiman et al., 2009. HortTech 19:558-562.

Disease Management

See Fire blight and Replant Disease pages