Growth and development in fruit crops is continuing slowly across the state due to cool temperatures and resulting low growing degree day accumulation. It’s been a rough start to spring to say the least. Frost and freeze damage from the April 15-16 events has become more obvious, and there are still risks of freezing temperatures in[Read More…]
Crop Management
There has been some talk about the use of promalin to help overcome the damaging effects of freezing temperatures. Only a small amount of research has been conducted on this. Dr. Steve McArtney showed that Promalin applied after damaging freeze events could increase parthenocarpic (seedless) fruit development, but not every time. Keep in mind this[Read More…]
What is the best way to assess bud damage from cold temperatures? Drs. Tara Baugher and Jim Schupp at Penn. State University have put together a nice page with some excellent photos explaining how to assess fruit bud survival: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/tree-fruit/news/2016/assessing-fruit-bud-survival-and-crop-potential I would add that unless you find that more than 90% of your buds have[Read More…]
Spring is here and with it comes the emergence of weeds- especially problematic perennials like Canada thistle (Figure 1). Many weeds in perennial fruit crops are controlled during site preparation, but can become problematic again after crop establishment. Below is some information about Canada thistle and methods to manage it. Keep in mind two things:[Read More…]
In the Midwest, extreme weather events are, unfortunately, regular occurrences, even in extremely unusual times. At this point, though, it just feels like a pile-on. Most fruit crops planted in Indiana are tolerant of the cold when they are fully dormant. In the spring, as trees break bud and begin to flower, they lose cold[Read More…]
This winter-spring has been my first excursion into growing strawberries in a high tunnel. It didn’t take much for our own Wenjing Guan to convince me to plant some; who doesn’t love to eat fresh strawberries? We planted them back in October and I just peeked at them every couple of weeks throughout the winter,[Read More…]
Apples in Lafayette are approaching pink. IN more southern areas of the state apples are past full bloom and into petal fall. Frost damage to crops has been widespread in southern areas of the state. Fruit crops are in early stages of growth across the state. In southern areas peaches and apples are in bloom[Read More…]
Warm temperatures this week greatly encouraged strawberry growth and development. Some of the early cultivars may have entered the open blossom stage especially if they are grown with the annual plasticulture system in southern Indiana. Open flowers cannot tolerate temperatures lower than 30°F, while popcorn stage flowers (Figure 1) and tight buds may tolerant temperatures[Read More…]
It can be useful to compare this growing with previous years. The typical way we calculate growing conditions is by calculating Growing Degree Days (GDD). This is somewhat similar to the method many are familiar with for calculating codling moth emergence. In Figure 1, we see the accumulation of GDD over the last 10 years.[Read More…]
Strawberry production with the annual plasticulture system is successfully used in southern states. Plug plants are planted in fall and strawberries are harvested in spring the next year. The planting is usually not carried over to crop a second year. Compared with matted row system, annual plasticulture system has advantages such as easier weed and[Read More…]