Blogs and Related Links

The schedule for our our 2025 production updates has been set. If you plan on attending a meeting we ask that you call and let us know. Space will be tight for these meetings and we need to be sure we have the resources to support our growers. Cotton: Friday, January 31st, Houston County Extension […]

Once this rain gets out of here and we can stand up in wheat fields we need to be considering our weed control options and applying early season fertility. Fall tiller production is necessary for optimum yields to be accomplished. 15 to 30 pounds of preplant or at planting nitrogen (N) is usually sufficient to […]

There are tons of available wheat varieties that you can choose from. If you go to our state wide variety testing site you can view their performance at all of our experiment stations. The UGA College of Agriculture tested many varieties from Rome to Tifton, and the data for 2024 can be viewed Here. Luckily […]

I imagine that all of us are looking into our respective locations to see how much chill we are accumulating this winter season. As a brief review and for anyone that is new to this bussiness, we have our traditional models: 1) The Weinberger Model (# hours below 45F) and 2) The Modified Weinberger Model […]

Peach evaluation is winding down in 2024 with few edible fruits on trees in variety and seedling blocks at the USDA Byron Station. 2024 was a special peach cropping year for breeding at the station. First, peach fruit set was incredibly heavy on a majority of seedling, selection and cultivar trees at the station, at […]

The USDA-ARS stone fruit program at Byron, GA has released two new early season peach cultivars named ‘May Joy’ (Fig. 1) and ‘Cardinal Joy’ (Fig. 2). ‘May Joy’ requires ~650 chill hours and produces yellow-fleshed, clingstone fruit that typically ripen approximately a week before ‘Flavorich’ and 2-3 weeks before ‘Carored’ in early to mid May […]

Here is a list of our county pecan production meetings scheduled for 2025 so far. All meetings are lunch meetings unless shown otherwise. Contact your local county office for details on locations and exact times. I’m sure we will be adding a few more to the list. I will update it as the meetings are […]

As I reported in my last blog post, the pecan market is puzzlingly dismal. Despite the loss of 1/3 of Georgia’s pecan crop to Hurricane Helene, and an overall 2024 supply (US Crop, Mexico, and Cold Storage) forecast to be lower than that of 2023, growers are being offered shockingly low prices for their crop. […]

The American Pecan Council recently contracted with Land IQ to complete an analysis of pecan losses due to Hurricane Helene using satellite imagery. The APC and Land IQ worked closely with UGA for ground-truthing and observational information related to damage in the affected areas. This gives us the potential for a much higher degree of […]

As we wrap up 2024, there is one more report that will be of some value as you think through disease management activities for 2025. As most of you are aware, the active ingredient in Ridomil, mefenoxam, is utilized to control Phytophthora crown and root rot of strawberry. Based on field observations, we have had […]

The below information was compiled by Guido Schnabel (Clemson University), Bill Cline (North Carolina State), and I to give a recipe of sorts for Neopestalotiopsis management with fungicides after planting this fall. It does not address spring applications, but you will need to incorporate remaining applications of fungicides at that time. Whether or not Neopestalotiopsis […]

See below for a good design for a strawberry sprayer, courtesy of the University of Arkansas. Good coverage is important for all diseases, but with Neopestalotiopsis, you really want to saturate the plant with fungicides. This may be helpful for some.