Author: Terence Bradshaw

I’m going to steal and repeat a line that one of our own growers shared recently: I hope everyone has all the equipment working flawlessly, all the mowing done, most of the spraying completed and is able to sit on the porch waiting for harvest to start unaided. With that said, there area few things…

One item that’s at top of mind is the heat we are expecting early this week could provide substantial stress to trees, not to mention farmers and farm workers. Plan ahead and take care of yourselves. If you have irrigation, is should absolutely be running this week. Even with drip irrigation, well-watered trees will have…

The time has come (and I’m actually a little late on this notice, so this shouldn’t be delayed) to hang apple maggot fly (AMF) traps in Vermont orchards. These are some of the easiest pests to manage using an IPM strategy, so there’s really no excuse. The idea is to assess the population in the…

The main management items that should be on the minds of growers right now are disease management, groundcover management, disease management, and maybe some insect management. Canopy management probably needs to wait a little bit. We have been seeing some symptoms of Phomopsis, a little black rot, and some downy mildew in the vineyards we…

We have a video up on YouTube this week if folks want to see what’s going on in our orchard. -TB We are settling into summer mode in Vermont orchards. For most of us, the weekly disease management treadmill is behind us, as all overwintering apple scab ascospores have long been released, so as long…

We caught our first codling moth in pheromone-baited Traps on May 20th, which set our biofix date for the degree day model used to track egg hatch and larval development. As of today we have reached the threshold for treatment in South Burlington, and will be treating our orchards tomorrow morning. It is important for…

Grape bloom is looming in many Vermont vineyards, and this is a critical time for disease and vine management. As we mention in our initial IPM strategy for winegrapes, all of the major diseases save for late-season fruit rots are sensitive to management right now. That means that fungicide applications should be made, using a…

Apple scab ascospore maturity models for essentially every weather station in the state indicates that we are at the end of the primary scab infection season. That means spores that could cause apple scab have matured and either has or likely will release after the next good wetting event. However, growers should maintain protective fungicide…

Given the long stretches of cool-to-cold weather, bloom has been stretched out all over the place in Vermont orchards. In warmer sites, apples are at petal fall, yet many trees in most sites are holding on to significant blossoms. Don’t jump the gun on applying insecticides to your orchards, wait until petals are gone and…

With the heat this week things moved fast, vines at the UVM vineyard hover around 1-2 inches of growth and those at my house at 1440 feet in elevation are at bud burst. It’s time to really be thinking about protecting vines from early season disease infections. Most cold-climate cultivars will not need disease protection…