Good morning, Everyone
With the Fall around the corner I would like to focus on late season practices and suggestions that will prepare your crop for the winter and potentially maximize your yield next year.
Strawberries
With a lot of rain, there are some diseases that you should be paying attention. The last couple of weeks I have seen many fields with Powdery Mildew and leaf spots. An application of a fungicide Group 7+11 like Pristine/Merivon/Luna tranquility is recommended. You can alway check our guide for more recommendations or reach out if you have any questions.
Strawberry Guide to Insect and Disease Management"
Keep scouting your crops for aphids, hoppers and mites, check with your advisor or reach out if you need an specific recommendation for control.
With the rain some of the weeds could escape our pre-emergent summer herbicides, you could use some post-emergent herbicides like Venture for grasses or Lontrel for broad leaves.
At this time of year, June-bearing strawberry fields are entering a critical period for root growth and flower bud initiation, both of which have a significant impact on next season's yield potential.
Last two weeks with the cold weather, several fields are showing some yellow symptoms in the new leaves, now is the time to focus on late-season nutrition. Nutrients such as zinc, boron, magnesium, and potassium play an especially important role during this stage. Small amounts of nitrogen can also be beneficial by supporting carbohydrate accumulation and energy storage for the following season. Several fertilizer blends are available on the market that can help achieve these objectives. To better understand the nutritional status of your fields, both soil and foliar tissue testing are recommended. These analyses will help identify any deficiencies or imbalances and guide nutrient management decisions. As we move toward winter, it is important to ensure nutrient levels are well balanced while avoiding excessive vegetative growth that could compromise plant hardiness and next year's productivity.
I have seen some fire blight in late blossoms, prunning affected branches and burn them, a copper application is recomended to avoid its spread in the spring time.
Your weed management remains important. Apply pre-emergent herbicide
for raspberry fall treatment. You could use Sinbar or Chateau in late fall. If you have a lot of weed pressure you could use Venture for grasses or 2,4 D for Broad leaves. Also, a burndown herbicide hooded application of Aim or Ignite could be used it.
Crown borer is always a concern, you could do one or two
applications of Altacor depending on the pressure, ask your IPM advisor. Direct
your sprays to the base of the canes with high volumes of water and high
pressure are recommended.
Applications of Zinc, Boron, Potassium and Magnesium will
improve nutrition going into the fall, again soil and foliar analysis is
recommended.
Blueberries
It is a suitable time of the year to take care of the weeds,
Callisto as a pre-emergent, a burndown herbicide like Ignite or glyphosate with a hood will keep your
beds clean and ready for next year.
Disease management is important; the application of copper
sulphate is useful to keep you bushes clean and ready for overwinter; this needs
to be done after 50 % of leaf drop. This treatment will help to suppress canker
and bacterial diseases and help with the leaf drop.