Lenny Wells

  • The Georgia Pecan Growers Association’s  Annual Fall Field Day will be held Thursday, September 4, 2014 at the UGA Tifton Campus Ponder Research Farm. Registration will begin at 8:30 and the program starts at 9:30. Topics covered include pecan insect management, pecan scab management, cultural practices, and cultivars. Admission is free to GPGA members. Registration…

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  • Water Stage Fruit Split

    You may be seeing a significant amount of nut drop at the moment on certain varieties. This will usually be water stage fruit split at this time of year. Water stage fruit-split of pecan is often a major problem exhibited by thin-shelled pecan varieties (e.g., Schley, Caddo, Oconee, Sumner, ‘Wichita’, ‘Frotcher’, and ‘Farley’) and, to a…

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  • Time to Turn on the Water!

    Some early pecan varieties have reached shell hardening and others are rapidly approaching. This means that the water use requirements of pecan are about at peak demand and will remain so through kernel filling. Therefore growers should have their irrigation systems running at full capacity at least by next week for most mid-season varieties like…

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  • Pecan production, like any type of farming, is a continuous battle, but it doesn’t matter how much hard work a grower puts into growing pecans if they slack off in August and allow the many stresses that plague the trees to get ahead of them. Many of these stresses will affect the following year’s crop…

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  • Managing Black Aphids

    Black aphids can be one of the most difficult pecan pests to manage because they often slip in, do their damage, and are gone before you know they are there. For this reason, they require pretty intensive scouting on susceptible varieties like Schley, Sumner, Oconee, and Gloria Grande. Anyone growing these varieties probably needs to…

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  • Time for Leaf Sampling

    Leaf sampling is the most important tool pecan growers have for determining their fertility needs. While soil samples are helpful for checking soil pH and determining any potential problems with competitive uptake between nutrients in the soil,  leaf samples tell you the fertility status of the actual trees. Using soil and leaf samples together allows growers to…

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  • Nut Drop

    Its the time of year when a few insects may rear their heads and cause some nut drop in the orchards. I refer here mostly to nut curculio and hickory shuckworm. The nut curculio attacks immature pecans from late June through early August.  Adults make shallow crescent shaped punctures with their snouts in the shucks of…

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