Hi fruit growers! Hopefully the season is going well for all of you. I am hearing from several folks that fruit development is ahead of where it was this time last year, and maybe that’s why I’m also getting a lot of questions about ‘unusual’ damage to the leaves and fruits of caneberries, apples, and[Read More…]
Pome Fruits
Everything here at the Meigs Horticulture Farm in Lafayette, Indiana seems to be off to a great start of fruit development. We have had an abundance of Strawberries the last two weeks and will for the next few weeks. We were able to find a handful of peaches on our trees.. no more than a[Read More…]
Leaving behind the fourth or fifth wettest April, rains continue in May. Many growers are confronted with serious issues with respect to scab management. Depending where you are in the state, development is at anywhere from petal fall to 2nd cover (kings at 10-11mm) or even further along. Against some pretty grim probabilities, most of[Read More…]
San Jose scale attacks all the delicious fruit trees: apple, peach, pear, and plum. Some of you may already know that this insect is particularly difficult to manage, because most life stages are very small, even tiny, so they are not obvious until there are lots of them! In fact, you’re going to need a[Read More…]
Fire blight, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora, is a devastating disease of apples and pears. Epidemics of the disease develop quickly, particularly in a climate of warm, wet weather, with hail events. The type of management program developed by each orchard will vary considerably based upon a variety of orchard factors, including apple variety,[Read More…]
All that new, succulent growth needs to be protected to prevent primary (and even secondary!) scab (Fig. 1). We’re past the point where copper can be safely used, so protectant fungicides for scab control at this stage include mancozeb, ziram and captan. As an added bonus, all of these protect against the summer rots, and[Read More…]