There is one thing I know to be true right now: nobody wants to spend another penny spraying anything on the 2025 peanut crop. Unfortunately, I have gotten several reports of heavy velvetbean caterpillar infestations in peanut fields in south-central Georgia over the last several days. One of them was in a field that was freshly dug. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question comes up nearly every year: if peanuts are dug with caterpillars in the field, will the caterpillars feed on the pegs? Can it happen? Yes. Does it happen often? No. How likely is it to happen? I don’t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of that said, I would not invert my peanuts with an above threshold population of half grown or bigger caterpillars in the field. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if the caterpillars are gone by digging, and even if it is too late for defoliation to cause direct yield loss, I don’t want to have to invert a field of stems…if you have ever tried it, you know why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Please take a moment in the mornings before you get on the picker to check your fields that have not been dug to be sure that velvetbean caterpillars are not at threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have questions about this or any other insect pest issue in peanut, please contact your local UGA county Extension agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is one thing I know to be true right now: nobody wants to spend another penny spraying anything on the 2025 peanut crop. Unfortunately, I have gotten several reports of heavy velvetbean caterpillar infestations in peanut fields in south-central Georgia over the last several days. One of them was in a field that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/peanutent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}