How to make dormant oil

In late winter, your fruit trees may be dormant but your chores in the yard aren't. Late winter and early spring, when the temperatures are barely above freezing, is the time to apply the best preventative for scale and mites: dormant oil.

Dormant oil sprays are used on fruit trees before the buds begin to swell and suffocate insects and their eggs nesting in branches. 

Using dormant oil on fruit trees doesn't completely eliminate the problem with these pests, but it is the best way to cut off most of the population, leaving a simpler problem later in the season.

Spraying of Dormant Oils

What is dormant oil?

It's an oil based product, typically petroleum but can also be vegetable oil based, especially designed for use on fruit trees. This oil has had surfactants mixed in to enable it to be mixed with water. 

Once the oil solution is sprayed on all the branches of a fruit tree or bush, it penetrates into the surface of the insect's hard outer shell and suffocates it by not allowing any oxygen to get through. 

Apples, crabapples, plums, quince, and pears&nbs

how long does it take for oil to dry