Well, it’s that time of year again; we’ve all finished planting young trees in new land, filling in skips in existing orchards and most everyone has finished spading trees for the year. Back in Georgia we have already put out a ton and a half of chicken litter to the acre and we got the sprayers out from under the shed a couple of weeks ago to start getting them ready for what I consider to be the third most important activity of the season , spraying. Third only to harvesting and irrigation. Here in the southeastern US we deal with scab on a regular basis, mostly through spraying. We do of course try to mitigate the fungus through cultivar selection but so far nothing beats the sprayer and the timing of the spray. As of today we have sprayed the first of many fungicide treatments for the season. There’s nothing like getting out ahead of the scab and keep it under pressure rather than it keeping us under pressure. We learned along time ago the value of getting the first scab treatment on early, basically as soon as the buds open. One advantage is the penetration of the spray, this is the only time of year that our spray can penetrate the tree so effectively.