Just a reminder to all fruit producers to organize and prep your fruit insect monitoring tools for the upcoming season! Depending on your fruit crop and location in the state, there’s a suite of fruit insects that are important for you to track, including moths, aphids, scales, stink bugs, fruit and vinegar flies, and[Read More…]
Insect Management
We were all hoping it would happen later, but unfortunately the spotted lanternfly (SLF) (Lycorma delicatula) (Figure 1), an invasive planthopper with a piercing-sucking feeding strategy, was officially detected in Vevay, Indiana (Switzerland County) for the first time in July 2021. You can see pictures and read more about the detection at the Indiana Department[Read More…]
Due to the COVID crisis, most Purdue Extension meetings will be held virtually. Most Purdue Extension staff are working from home and are available to answer your questions by email, phone or through social media. Our contact information is at the end of the newsletter. July 30, 2020 Small Farm Education Field Day and Webinar[Read More…]
Aphids have been a particularly challenging pest to get under control in our high tunnel strawberries this year. They quickly colonized the strawberries we had growing all winter and took off as the weather warmed (Fig. 1). In my first attempt to knock them back I introduced 2,000 lacewing larvae (22-Apr), too little too late.[Read More…]
The horticultural entomology team is happy to report that we’re continuing efforts to support Indiana apple growers by monitoring tree fruit pests and reporting what we find! On April 22, 2020, we placed pheromone-baited monitoring traps for two important tree fruit pests, the codling moth and Oriental fruit moth at the Meigs Purdue Agricultural Center[Read More…]
Due to the COVID crisis, all Purdue Extension meetings have been cancelled until further notice. Some may be offered by distance education, but no in-person meetings will be allowed. Most Purdue Extension staff are working from home. We are available to answer your questions by email, phone or through social media. Our contact information is[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…]
Grapes are in the early stages of growth across the state, from bud break to 4 to 6 inch shoots. Significant frost and freeze damage occurred in central and southern areas so that will set growth back a couple of weeks as the secondary buds break. With a reduced number of primary shoots, protection of[Read More…]
Recently we have received reports of swarms of hover flies (aka syrphid flies) around Indiana and wanted to take the opportunity to tell you a bit about this curious insect (Figure 1). Adult hover flies can sometimes be mistaken for bees or wasps, because they look a lot like them! Some people refer to hover[Read More…]