Recent Posts

  •   As all you know, Georgia is facing drought conditions. We want to remind you that although peach trees are heading to fall/winter and fruit were harvested a long time ago, the trees still need water. The requirement of a mature tree in the peak of the season (July/August) is between 40-50 gallons/tree per day.…

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  • The second large peak of San Jose scale crawler activity is right around the corner, within the next couple of weeks in middle Georgia. We’ve been collecting a few crawlers on untreated trees for a couple of weeks, but we are now starting to collect considerably higher numbers on our research trees in Fort Valley,…

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  • The first large peak of San Jose scale crawler activity is right around the corner. With the heat, the crawlers have been active for a few weeks, but we are now starting to collect considerable numbers of crawlers on the double-sided tapes on our un-treated research trees in Fort Valley, GA. The increasing numbers of…

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  • Some of our peach producers also produce apples.  Abound fungicide has significant phyto issues on apples (see below from the label).  With my previous post on blossom blight, you can substitute Merivon or Pristine for Abound when controlling early-season green fruit rot — if you want to also use the same sprayer on apples. Merivon…

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  • As many of you know, blossom blight is prevalent this year.  It is not present on all peach varieties to the same degree, but many varieties are inundated with Monilinia fructicola (brown rot) spores on the blooms, many of which are gummed and forming cankers.  In some cases, the cankers are girdling stems and resulting…

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  • Farmer of the Year

    2019 will be the 30th Anniversary of Swisher International and the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition to have the honor to salute the agricultural community and industry with the Swisher Sweets / Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year Award. In the previous 29 years, many of agriculture’s top business leaders, innovators, environmentalists, pioneers, family men, problem…

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  • Today, March 18, 2019, we collected our first plum curculio of the season in one of our traps in Byron, GA. While we only found two, this indicates that plum curculio are becoming active in middle Georgia peaches. If you have varieties at or near petal fall, it is time to start preparing your plum…

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