A hazelnut grower explains why healthy trees don't need insecticides. By focusing on tree vigor through nutrition and pruning, several orchard blocks have gone three years without spraying and seen no filbert worm damage.
Chapters
Plants have the ability to be healthy, and just like they have an immune system just like us humans, and I think the idea of just constantly pouring insecticides, fungicides, and those things on ubiquitously all the time just makes it— keeps it sick. And so I believe really just in trying to keep the trees healthy, and they can then fight off those diseases and insect issues that they come across, just like we as humans do. You wouldn't take penicillin every day for your life and expect to be healthy. Been able to significantly reduce, and in some orchards actually eliminate, insecticide entirely and haven't had any pest problems insect-related. So that's been a big not so much the costing, it's just the, the belief that it's better and healthier for, for all of us and the trees as well. And they managed to keep themselves growing and strong. The primary insect pest for hazelnuts is the filbert moth, filbert worm, and that's a pest that usually gets into the nut actually itself, and so it affects the crop and can be docked and cause problems that will build over time. And yeah, we've been able to eliminate this. Actually, this block here next— we're next to— I haven't sprayed insecticide on in at least 3 years. I'm not sure I ever have. So yeah, they're, they're coming along well.
