Recent Posts

  • Good morning everyone. We are in that time of the year in which we count our chill hours/portions accumulated during the season. As a refreshment, we have multiple sources of information that can be used. Please refer to our previous post https://site.extension.uga.edu/peaches/2025/01/chill-data-sites-and-new-tools-for-dynamic-model-data/ for more detail information of what sources can be found out there to…

    Posted in:
  • Good evening everyone. As I have mentioned at our various meetings recently, chlorpyrifos is still under review by the EPA. To give commenters more time to provide input, the EPA is reopening the public comment period on their proposed rule to revoke certain tolerances for chlorpyrifos. The proposed rule and commenting form can be found…

    Posted in:
  • I imagine that all of us are looking into our respective locations to see how much chill we are accumulating this winter season. As a brief review and for anyone that is new to this business, we have our traditional models: 1) The Weinberger Model (# hours below 45F) and 2) The Modified Weinberger Model…

    Posted in:
  • Peach evaluation is winding down in 2024 with few edible fruits on trees in variety and seedling blocks at the USDA Byron Station. 2024 was a special peach cropping year for breeding at the station. First, peach fruit set was incredibly heavy on a majority of seedling, selection and cultivar trees at the station, at…

    Posted in: ,
  • The USDA-ARS stone fruit program at Byron, GA has released two new early season peach cultivars named ‘May Joy’ (Fig. 1) and ‘Cardinal Joy’ (Fig. 2). ‘May Joy’ requires ~650 chill hours and produces yellow-fleshed, clingstone fruit that typically ripen approximately a week before ‘Flavorich’ and 2-3 weeks before ‘Carored’ in early to mid May…

    Posted in: ,
  • Unfortunately, after a year of limited yield, yet minor pest activity, this season is already becoming an interesting one. I have had several reports of thrips causing considerable “silvering” damage (see example below). With the severity and extent of the damage we have seen in certain places, I just wanted to alert everyone to this…

    Posted in:
  • With the relatively cool spring weather we have been having, the first large peak of San Jose scale crawler activity is delayed this year compared to last year. Crawlers have already been observed this season and with the consistently warmer weather we have been having, the SJS development will speed up, so I anticipate the…

    Posted in: