Fruit and Vegetable Production Resources
-
Georgia pecan orchards are often found growing adjacent to fields of annual row crops, timber, and pastures. As a result, the tree canopies of these orchards are susceptible to injury from herbicide drift from the adjacent operations when herbicide applications are made under conditions unsuitable for spraying. Drift may also occur when cotton fields are sprayed with chemical defoliants in the fall. Pecan tree roots often extend into an adjacent row crop fields and can compete with the row crop for available soil, water, and nutrients. Under such conditions, trees may also absorb residual herbicides from the soil in these fields.
|
-
This publication outlines the sampling procedure for irrigation water to be used in blueberry production. Follow the outlined steps to provide a certified lab with a sample that is representative of the irrigation water to be used for growing blueberry plants.
|
-
Growing vegetables as either a part-time or full-time enterprise can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Not only can you produce fresh food for your own table, you can provide supplemental income to your family’s budget. While that may sound great, there are several considerations to bear in mind before you jump into this endeavor. Items to consider before becoming a small market grower include time commitment, capital, available resources, licensing, insurance, taxes, and marketing. This publication is intended for general use audiences, including farmers and those considering entering small market vegetable production.
|
-
This publication describes ways to identify and manage cowpea curculio damage in Southern pea.
|
-
Watermelon is a warm-season crop related to cantaloupe, squash, cucumber and pumpkin. Watermelons can be grown on any well-drained soil throughout Georgia but are particularly well adapted to the Coastal Plain soils of South Georgia. Watermelons will continue to be an important part of vegetable production in the state. Increases in average yield per acre will continue as more growers adopt plastic mulch, intensive management and new hybrid varieties.
|
-
Harvest losses can rob you of profit from grain and bean production. Harvest losses of 10 percent or more are not unusual, when they should be in the 2 to 4 percent range. If you do not check losses behind your combine, you have no idea what the losses are and where they occur during harvesting. The following procedure outlines how to measure losses during harvest. It also shows you where the losses occur. The grain or beans saved mean that much more profit saved.
|
-
Research shows that drip irrigation is highly beneficial to pecan trees in Georgia, even in wet years. This resource explains the benefits that drip irrigation offers.
|
-
Results from this study are preliminary, as only 2 years of data have been collected. Research over longer periods of time will be more revealing about how mechanical pruning will impact the perennial crop yield and health of the vineyard. Mechanical pruning is an option for dormant pruning ‘Carlos’ in situations where labor is unreliable and/or there is a low labor-to-acreage ratio which precludes the ability to finish pruning in the dormant period (December through March).
Concerns remain regarding the inaccuracy of mechanical pruning and the resultant amount of diseased and unproductive grapevine wood that remains in the canopy. It therefore may be a good practice to manually prune blocks of the vineyard on a recurring basis in order to reduce canopy congestion and the potential for disease buildup. Mechanical pruning may not be best practice in fresh-market muscadine cultivars, particularly those that produce bronze fruit that are less tolerant of rots and defects than purple fruit.
Mechanical pruning ‘Carlos’ and ‘Noble’ vineyards is worth consideration as these popular juice muscadine cultivars are vigorous and productive and may therefore sustain perennial health under high bud densities. Because of the preliminary nature of this report, it is recommended that mechanical, or “minimal” pruning, be trialed in vineyard blocks or sections before it is widely implemented with confidence.
|
-
Root-knot nematodes are highly adaptable, obligate plant parasites (parasites that cannot reach adulthood without a host) that attack plant roots and establish a prolonged relationship with their hosts. There are three common species of root-knot nematodes known to parasitize watermelon in the U.S.: the southern root-knot, M. incognita, the peanut root-knot, M. arenaria, and the Javanese root-knot, M. javanica. The southern root-knot nematode is ranked first in terms of negative impact on watermelon production, particularly in warm temperate climates. Many watermelon fields in Georgia are infested with one or more species of root-knot nematodes.
|