What You Need to Know About the First Dormant Oil Application
Do you have questions about dormant oil applications? Advanced Turf Sales Rep Nikki Hendrickson gives you all the information you need to make a successful application in the video and transcript below.
When should the first application for ornamental plants take place generally?
Your first round on ornamentals, I’m thinking of fungicide mixed with the dormant oil, is usually going to take place right after bud break. Certain plants are going to break bud and leaf out earlier than others. Typically, your crab apples are going to leaf out earlier than things like hawthorns. So, kind of base it on when your plants are leafing out, and you should be good to go.
What are we treating for in most situations?
So, our first application on ornamentals, typically, we’re using a dormant oil combined with a fungicide, and we’re going after early spring diseases, things like apple scab, rust diseases, leaf spots, and anthracnose. You could put something like Nordox in there and also go after fire blight. That should be applied around bloom on rosaceous plants. But, it would also be a good, general, bacteria, virus, cleanup product, too.
What products should be in the first application and why?
So, in our first application, I usually do a dormant oil just to try to take care of any small insects, any small soft-bodied insects, any insect eggs out there. It’s never going to hurt to have it in. I’m also going to have a general fungicide in there. I tend to like something like Tourney, or you could use propiconazole or something like that in that app. But you want a good fungicide. And then you could also throw in Nordex as that fire blight product because most of the time that’s also going to be coming out about the same time that hawthorns and crab apples and pears would be in bloom.
Are there any limitations we should be aware of when making these applications?
When you’re making the first application, things that I would really think about are what plants are you having issues with? Are you going after anthracnose on dogwoods, apple scab only, or things like hawthorn rust? Really look and plan that route to what plants you’re treating and what leaves have popped out. So, you want to make sure that you’re not at a property where only the crab apples’ leaves have emerged and there are also hawthorns at that property that have not emerged. You need to think about your timing and what you’re actually spraying on each property.
