Cotton: These afternoon storms sure have been raising the boll rot concerns. I am already seeing several hits of Diplodia, Anthracnose, and Fusarium boll rot. Don’t worry too much about the names; boll rot is boll rot, and most of what I see looks insect-related although these wet, humid days sure aren’t helping. The fields I’ve been tracking whiteflies in have not been building over the past week; they have remained just under the threshold level. There are cases of areolate mildew in surrounding counties, but I haven’t seen any in Tift yet.
Pecans: This is just a reminder that given the recent rain and the stage the pecans are in, if you have not seen it already, we will likely be seeing water-stage fruit split into many varieties over the next couple of weeks. Water stage fruit-split of pecan is often a significant problem exhibited by thin-shelled pecan varieties (e.g., Schley, Caddo, Oconee, Sumner, Wichita, Frotscher, and Farley) and, to a lesser degree, by specific relatively thick-shelled cultivars (e.g., ‘Cape Fear’ and ‘Elliott’). The problem occurs when water pressure builds up rapidly inside the nut, causing the shell, seed coat, and sometimes the shuck to split about the time of the initiation of kernel filling and shell hardening, resulting in abortion and drop of damaged fruit about 7 days after splitting. Don’t panic when you see water split. It is a normal physiological response of the tree to environmental conditions, and it will end with much less reduction in yield than it at first appears.
Peanuts: I will be getting the peanut maturity check dates out soon. Regan and I will probably start around the first of September.