Plant nutritional status is important for all phases of plant growth and has a direct effect on vigor, fruitfulness, cold hardiness, and other factors. Tissue analysis is the most reliable means of determining plant nutritional status. Combined with soil testing, tissue analysis can help pinpoint the source of problems and determine what measures may be[Read More…]
Crop Management
This was a very short year for strawberries due to the record warmth in May. By now, most harvest is over. As soon as harvest is done, it’s time to begin the renovation process. Matted row strawberry plantings must be renovated each year to establish new crowns for the following year’s crop. For best results,[Read More…]
Now that we are past fruit set, it is easy to tell what level of crop we are carrying. With the fairly extensive winter injury this year, many varieties will have a light crop borne on secondary or tertiary shoots. Little if any crop control will be needed in those. However, many of the plantings[Read More…]
Diseases that affect the twigs, branches, and the main trunk of a tree are referred to as cankers or blights. Canker diseases can be a serious problem in the orchard, vineyard, berry or bramble patch when they are not properly managed, and even when they are. All woody plants can be infected by canker pathogens.[Read More…]
One of the most important management practices for production of blackberries and black raspberries is summer tipping of the primocanes. This practice removes the apical dominance of the shoot tip, resulting in several lateral branches below the tip, and a stronger primocane. Next year’s crop will primarily be produced from buds on the lateral branches,[Read More…]
Canopy management is a critical production practice for improved sunlight exposure. Pulling shoots off the top of the rows in high cordon-trained vines improves sunlight exposure to the leaves at the base of the shoots. Those basal nodes will be the ones saved as spurs next year during pruning, and sunlight improves bud fruitfulness and[Read More…]
This is the last installment of our series on spring temperatures for 2018. What a strange year it has been. We started out very cool until mid-April and it didn’t really warm up until early May (Fig. 1). I think every day since then has been over 80F. Although the early spring was much cooler[Read More…]
We’re getting close to the time when growers need to make chemical thinning decisions – for many the most perplexing and risky decision they will make all year. Even with a relatively mild spring without too much interference by spring frosts, this is a tricky call to make. In most cases, there are plenty of[Read More…]
We all know that it in the last two weeks, temperatures have warmed up considerably, but when we plot out the growing degree days (GDD), we can see how dramatic this warming trend has been (Figure 1). In Lafayette a couple of weeks ago, we had accumulated less than 100 GDD – now we’re closing[Read More…]