Jim said:
Guys,  Pink Bud is the term and I wouldn't be too confident that the
almond growers that don't spray actually don't--there are common organic
oils, lime sulfur and other compounds usually applied about this time.

The Almond grower across the road from the groves we pollinate does not use
any sprays and never has . He prunes and gathers the almonds.

The grower feels he does better than the grower which invests in sprays and
labor spraying especially in bad years.

The Almond grower which we pollinate uses various sprays all the time. He
even held us up wanting to put yet another spray on this year ( our bees
have been in the groves for about five days).

Growing up in Florida we had the same scenario. One grower would spray their
orange trees and the next grower never touched his orchard except to pick
the fruit.

Of course production would be better on the orange/almond  groves which were
sprayed and maintained BUT the bottom line figure at times could be better
on the *leave alone* grove.

In Florida my father was always spraying, pruning etc. and we did get
beautiful oranges BUT oranges hauled to the processing plant brought the
same money( bought by weight) and the only requirment was the oranges did
not come off the ground (good looking oranges recently fallen many times
did). I picked and hauled many loads of oranges to earn extra money as a
teenager in Florida. Also *fired* a few orange groves in cold weather.

Bob