Horticulture
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For the last 5 years, we have been conducting a study on the performance of three low-input pecan cultivars—Lakota, Excel, and McMillan—at the UGA Ponder Farm near Tifton. As we have managed this particular orchard, low input in this case, refers to the absence of fungicide applications. The trees received all other normal inputs with…
Posted in: Horticulture -
Unfortunately, budbreak is arriving much, much earlier than normal. I took the following photos in an Elliot orchard today. Elliot is one of the earliest cultivars to break bud and these were just appearing on some of the suckers growing out from the trunk but its an indication that spring is here. I didnt see…
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As Andrew mentioned in the last blog post, Dr. Barman has been seeing consistent flights of ambrosia beetle for several weeks now. We are starting to get calls about hits on new plantings. Budbreak is looking to be early this year. Reports of early budbreak of many plants throughout the Southeastern U.S. by those who…
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We have been busy over the last week hedge pruning our orchards and research plots at the UGA Ponder Farm near Tifton. Hedge pruning generates a lot of limbs that must be disposed of. This practice is often time consuming and the limbs are piled and burned. There may be a better way to dispose…
Posted in: Horticulture -
As we enter August shell hardening is upon us for Pawnee and other varieties are only a few days to weeks behind. This means that for Pawnee we are shifting from nut sizing to kernel filling. As a result there are two things to keep in mind: 1) You should be about done with fungicide…
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As predicted we are seeing a banner year for water stage fruit split. We are currently seeing nut drop from water split even on varieties on which we don’t normally see it (such as Desirable). It has been abnormally wet this growing season and especially through the late water stage and early shell hardening phase…
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We’re into late summer and seeing some leaf scorching out there. The two most common types I have had calls on this week have been from the scorching of young trees from heat stress. On older trees we are seeing a fair amount of terminal die back (Neofusicoccum). I went back and looked at the…