General

  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • Obtained from Fruit Grower News – written by Tom Ford – Penn State University (permission to share this info). As a horticultural crop producer, you are approaching your busiest time of year and the COVID-19 outbreak may impact your ability to source inputs, engage workers and/or operate your business in a normal fashion. While we…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • These above 50°F weather makes for a lovely day, but the scale insects enjoy it too, becoming developmentally active above 51°F. That means it is a good time to nip these guys in the bud. For delayed dormant timing, apply dormant horticultural oil at a rate of 1.5% oil to water. It is recommended to apply…

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