The most important step when approaching pests and diseases is learning to identify what you see.
Pest and Disease Guide for Stone Fruit
In 2025, we created the Pest and Disease Guide for Stone Fruit which prioritizes balancing the ecosystem by encouraging and incorporating a diversity of microbial, plant, insect, and bird life along with weekly orchard walk-throughs to closely monitor pest and disease issues.
We profile 4 of the biggest pest and diseases issues for stone fruit offering a lifecycle description with images and illustrations along with a Monthly Management Plan:
- Oriental Fruit Moth
- Plum Curculio
- Brown Rot
- Black Knot
The guide offers additional resources including:
- Imagery of the bud stages
- How to submit a soil test
- Overview of sprays
- Compost tea recipe
- Supply list
Additional Pest and Disease management plans:
You can see them all come together with images and illustrations in our new 2026 edition of the Pest and Disease Guide set to release in June 2026.
Pest and Disease Videos
In 2023, POP partnered with Big Picture Alliance to create a 3 episode series on Pest and Disease Management. Big Picture Alliance was able to collect beautiful footage of POP orchard sites across the city, and created custom graphic motion to illustrate hard to see lifecycle stages in orchard pest and diseases.
Click here for the full series playlist.
Virtual Pest and Disease Workshop
In response to the pandemic, we shifted trainings to virtual zoom trainings for several years. Here is a 90 minute live presentation by POP staff with an overview of common pest and diseases and resources for management.
Pest and Disease Workshops
This year we’ll being hosting two in-person Pest and Disease Workshops, one for the public and the other exclusive for our orchard partners and Lead Orchard Volunteers (LOVs). Registration will become live one month before the event.
- June 9th, 6-7:30pm @ POP’s Learning Orchard (Public workshop)
- June 13th, 10-1pm @ POP’s Learning Orchard (Partner and LOV only)
