By Terence Bradshaw Well, so much for spring. Things sure cooled down this week, with apple trees pretty much parked between green tip and half-inch green bud stage, with a little more advancement in southern parts of the state. The primary scab ascospores that drive the whole disease cycle for the year and overwinter on …
Monthly Archives: April 2019
Scouting workshop May 16; apple season is well underway
By Terence Bradshaw At the UVM Horticulture Research and Education Center (HREC), we hit the green tip bud stage on McIntosh today. This means that, even for orchards with relatively low apple scab inoculum that carried over from last year, disease management should commence any time. Today would have been a great time to put …
Continue reading “Scouting workshop May 16; apple season is well underway”
2019 New England Tree Fruit Management Guide available!
By Terence Bradshaw For as long as I’ve been in this fruit business with UVM (1995-present) and well before, the cooperating Extension fruit programs of the New England Universities have collaborated on a management guide for commercial tree fruit growers. That guide has taken numerous forms, but in 2017, we switched a on online-only platform …
Continue reading “2019 New England Tree Fruit Management Guide available!”
Beginning the 2019 viticulture season
By Terence Bradshaw After a long winter, spring is here and bud break is approaching. Plan on wrapping up pruning in the coming weeks and removing brush from the rive alleys to the burn pile (and burn it, too, to reduce overwintering insects and disease inoculum). This is a good time to review your previous …
Green tip on apples expected as early as this week
By Terence Bradshaw After a long, drawn-out winter like those from the ‘good old days’, it’s hard to believe that spring often happens pretty quickly. By that I mean that we’ll shift from winter activities when the sleeping trees provide us plenty of time and bandwidth to tend to certain tasks, but when the buds …
Continue reading “Green tip on apples expected as early as this week”
Slightly late, but the return of the UMASS March Message
By Terence Bradshaw The late Dr. Ron Prokopy at UMASS was instrumental in pulling together the “March Message”, an pre-season update on IPM and other topics for tree fruit growers. Dr. Jaime Pinero, the ‘new’ UMASS Extension Entomologist, has revived this valuable tool, which I have attached here. Key take-homes: · Orchard sanitation this spring …
Continue reading “Slightly late, but the return of the UMASS March Message”