June 22, 2017
Crop development: June bearing harvest continues and pick-your-own is in full swing in many parts of Ontario. Raspberries and blueberries are ripening and harvest should begin in a couple weeks.
Haskaps: Haskap harvest has begun. Determining when the fruit reaches the right flavour can be difficult- colour is not a good indicator of ripeness. Evan Elford, OMAFRA’s New Crop Development Specialist, recently posted two articles on haskaps: Haskap Cultivar Characteristics and Patience Pays for Haskap Flavour, on the OnSpecialtyCrops blog, discussing the trade-off between flavour development and potential yield loss.
Blueberries:
Crop set looks good in blueberries. Look at the fruit set versus the vegetative growth and plan to prune to balance vegetative and fruiting growth this winter where there was too much fruit. The goal is to prune blueberries to limit the crop to only high quality berries and have sustainable yields every year.
Raspberries: Continue to provide consistent soil moisture to raspberry plants during the green fruit stage.
Strawberries: Day neutrals: As new plantings come into bloom check for tarnished plant bug. Apply an insecticide when 25% of clusters are infested. Anthracnose has shown up in a couple day neutral fields. Include a group M fungicide in your disease management program to manage both botrytis and anthracnose.
June bearing: bronzed, seedy, cracked fruit caused by thrips continues to be a problem in June bearing strawberries. Thrips are best controlled when bloom or early green fruit is present. The damage could already be done in further advanced fields but keep looking for thrips in blossoms of later varieties including Malwina and Valley Sunset.
Leaf diseases including leaf scorch and leaf blight are present in a few fields. Virus symptoms can still be found in June bearing fields. To maintain the vigour of your fields for next year and protect your newly planted fields aphid management needs to be a priority. This time of year established strawberry plants have fewer new leaves. Aphids will leave bearing fields and fly to new plantings to find new, succulent leaves to feed on. Keep both bearing fields and new fields protected. Admire can be used on new fields, or Beleaf or Sivanto Prime on bearing fields. Continue to monitor for the aphids and plan to re-apply an insecticide in 2-3 weeks if populations build up again.
Cyclamen mite damage can be found in June bearing fields. This pest needs to be controlled before bloom so mark the hotspots in your field for control next spring.
Spotted-Wing Drosophila:
The first SWD female was found last week in a wild host in southern Ontario. Monitor for this pest with a salt water test or a plastic baggie test, using healthy, ripe berries that do not show any signs of damage or infection. If larvae emerge out of this fruit it is likely SWD. Last year SWD populations began to build up in mid-July.
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