Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:28 am Post subject: Sulfur for bud mites
I found two articles from Australia that deal with rust mite and bud mite control. http://wine.oregonstate.edu/Rust-BudMitesArticles.pdf
Here are some important points:
Wettable sulfur is a good material. They suggest 200 grams / 100 liters. It is not clear to me if they mean this as a concentration or total applied. This is equivalent to .44 lbs / 26.39 gal. I have presumed this is concentration, increased volume to 100 gallons, and rounded off to 2 lbs. wettable. They don't claim to know the optimum rate.
In the rust mite article, they recommend canola oil plus sulfur. This helps get the sulfur into the opening buds. The rust mite timing is just before budbreak. They warn against this combination after bud break.
The article says the week after budbreak is the window for bud mites. Timing is critical. Unfortunately buds break at different times. But you do the best you can.
I'm thinking a top notch spreader such as Kinetic could take the place of Canola oil after budbreak, to help the sulfur get into the tight spaces. I don't know how well Kinetic works with sulfur, or if there might be a phyto problem, but there is no warning on either label.
Predator mites play an important role. They warn against using chemicals hard on predators, specifically Benlate.
Devin Carroll