{"id":273,"date":"2020-03-24T11:12:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T15:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/?p=273"},"modified":"2020-03-24T11:38:04","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T15:38:04","slug":"plant-plagues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/plant-plagues\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant Plagues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image courtesy of North Carolina State University<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The abundant rainfall and warm weather over the past few\nweeks has unleashed a potential plague of weeds, insects, and garden\ndiseases.  It appears that spring is\ncoming early this year!  So far, we are\nabout ten inches above normal for rainfall in North Georgia.  Soil temperatures are warming up fast, which\nmeans this weekend is the last chance you will have to apply a spring\npre-emergent on your lawn to avoid summer weeds.  Crabgrass is already starting to germinate in\n55F degree soils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wet spring conditions will favor many blossom blight and fruit\nrot diseases on apples (black rot), pears (fire blight), peaches (brown rot),\nblueberries (botrytis blight) and plums (brown rot).  Since these fruit trees are starting to\nbloom, you should already be spraying a fungicide to protect the flowers and young\nfruit from certain diseases. Avoid spraying any products that contain\ninsecticides that might affect your pollinators during full bloom.  After the blooms are gone, you can switch to\na combination home orchard spray with an insecticide, if you desire.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you getting spring fever and ready to plant your summer\nvegetable garden?  There are a few\nthings to consider before planting.  First, the soil will need to dry out\nenough to work the soil without sticking to your tiller and compacting the soil\ninto mud bricks.  Use the \u201csqueeze test\u201d\nwith a clump of soil in your hand to check soil moisture.  If the soil stays in a ball, it\u2019s too wet to\ntill.  If it starts to fall apart in your\nhand, then it\u2019s ready to turn the soil.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second consideration is the\nsoil temperature, which should ideally average 65F to 70F degrees at a 4\u201d inch\nsoil depth for a week before you plant most summer vegetables.  Planting\nin cooler soils will lead to poor seed germination and encourage root disease\nissues.  Direct seeding in soils just a\nfew degrees too cold could delay seed germination as much as 14 days compared\nto the ideal temperature, which might only take 5 to 7 days.  The longer seeds take to germinate, the more\nlikely they will rot or get diseased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can track soil temperatures\nthrough your local weather station online: www.georgiaweather.net<\/a>.  Navigate the website buttons to the\ncalculator for soil temperature.  Choose\nthe nearest weather station to your home: Rome, Ball Ground, Dallas, or\nCalhoun.  Currently, soil temperatures in\nRome are averaging about 57F degrees at a 4\u201d soil depth.  We\u2019re on track\nto warm up enough to plant in early April if the soil dries out.  This is\na few weeks earlier than the historical average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another consideration is soil pH\nand fertility.  Good soil fertility is\nessential to keeping your plants healthy so they can better tolerate insects\nand diseases.  When was the last time you\ndid a soil test on your garden?  If it\u2019s\nbeen a few years, you should submit a soil sample for testing at the County\nExtension office.  If your soil pH is too\nhigh or too low, then you\u2019re wasting your time and money on fertilizer, since\nit will not be available to the plants. \nThe ideal pH is around 6.5 for most vegetables.  Call the County Extension office about how to\ncollect a soil sample or go online to www.soiltest123.com<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, UGA Extension\nhas over thirty free publications online about home gardening and growing\nspecific vegetables for Georgia at https:\/\/t.uga.edu\/5LI<\/a>.  Do your homework and select disease resistant\nvarieties that are recommended for Georgia. \nOne factsheet you might want to read is \u201cDisease Management in the Home\nVegetable Garden,\u201d which is an important consideration given the weather this\nspring.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

###<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Pugliese is the Extension\nCoordinator and Agricultural & Natural Resources Agent for Bartow County\nCooperative Extension, a partnership of The University of Georgia, The U.S.\nDepartment of Agriculture, and Bartow County. \nFor more information and free farm, lawn, or garden publications, call\n(770) 387-5142 or visit our local website at <\/em><\/strong>ugaextension.org\/bartow<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The abundant rainfall and warm weather over the past few weeks has unleashed a potential plague of weeds, insects, and garden diseases.  It appears that spring is coming early this year!  So far, we are about ten inches above normal for rainfall in North Georgia.  Soil temperatures are warming up fast, which means this weekend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,1,5,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diseases","category-insects","category-uncategorized","category-vegetable-gardens","category-weeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}