{"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":"2026-05-11T16:39:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:39:48","slug":"plant-plagues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/plant-plagues\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant Plagues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"plant
Image courtesy of North Carolina State University<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\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 through your local weather station online<\/a>.\u00a0 Navigate the website buttons to the calculator for soil temperature.\u00a0 Choose the nearest weather station to your home: Rome, Ball Ground, Dallas, or Calhoun.\u00a0 Currently, soil temperatures in Rome are averaging about 57F degrees at a 4\u201d soil depth.\u00a0 We\u2019re on track to warm up enough to plant in early April if the soil dries out.\u00a0 This is a few weeks earlier than the historical average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another consideration is soil pH and fertility.\u00a0 Good soil fertility is essential to keeping your plants healthy so they can better tolerate insects and diseases.\u00a0 When was the last time you did a soil test on your garden?\u00a0 If it\u2019s been a few years, you should submit a soil sample for testing at the County Extension office.\u00a0 If your soil pH is too high or too low, then you\u2019re wasting your time and money on fertilizer, since it will not be available to the plants.\u00a0 The ideal pH is around 6.5 for most vegetables.\u00a0 Call the County Extension office about how to collect a soil sample or go online to order a soil test kit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, UGA Extension has over thirty free publications online<\/a> about home gardening and growing specific vegetables for Georgia.\u00a0 Do your homework and select disease resistant varieties that are recommended for Georgia.\u00a0 One factsheet you might want to read is \u201cDisease Management in the Home Vegetable Garden<\/a>,\u201d which is an important consideration given the weather this spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Paul Pugliese is the Extension Coordinator and Agricultural & Natural Resources Agent for Bartow County Cooperative Extension, a partnership of The University of Georgia, The U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Bartow County.\u00a0 For more information and free farm, lawn, or garden publications, call (770) 387-5142 or visit our local website<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/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":[13,15,5,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diseases","category-insects","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":7,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/bartow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/995"}],"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}]}}