Small Fruits

The end of the growing season is in sight, and apple and pumpkin harvest season has begun. For many operations, this is a time of increased numbers of visitors on the farm. Those operations that add agritourism to their offerings know that sunflower festivals give way to apple festivals and perhaps peak with Halloween and pumpkin events.

Botrytis is a major disease threat as harvest approaches. Botrytis cinerea is a fungus that affects many plant species, especially wine grapes, where it is commonly known as Botrytis bunch rot or gray mold.

The invasive spotted-wing drosophila (SWD) is the key insect pest of soft-skinned fruit across the United States. With the recent wet weather, we have been experiencing higher than normal spotted wing drosophila (SWD) pressure.

While visiting a tomato field this week I saw the tell-tale signs on the flowers that this field was being visited by bumble bees that were pollinating the tomato flowers. In the field wind movement is usually enough to cause pollination in a tomato flower, but at times there are very calm days and nights with very ‘heavy’ air and little wind movement. However, even with wind action it is always beneficial to have bumble bees perform buzz pollination, which can greatly in-crease fruit set..

Black Root Rot found in strawberry plantings in the Mid-Atlantic this season.

The growth period from 2 weeks pre-bloom until 3 to 4 weeks post-bloom is the most critical for protecting foliage, and especially flowers and newly set fruit from black rot (BR), Phomopsis (Ph), powdery mildew (PM), Downy mildew (DM), and Botrytis bunch rot infections.

Presentations from the Western Maryland Regional Fruit Meeting

This introduction is part of the online publication "From Surviving to Thriving: Strategies for Urban Farm Sucess. It’s been raining for weeks, the weeds are strangling your crops, it seems like there are fewer customers at the farmers market every week, your landlord just called to say your rent is going up, your summer helpers decided they would rather work indoors, and on top of it all that unrealistic Extension Agent keeps bugging you to write a business plan.

Early this month, the Baltimore City Department of Public Works issued a Required Boil Water Advisory for parts of Baltimore City and a Precautionary Boil Water Advisory for a larger portion of the city and part of Baltimore County due to E. coli being identified in municipal water in parts of the city. While the Department of Public Works (DPW) has received the all-clear from the Maryland Department of Environment to lift the boil water advisory, below are some tips for farmers in the event a similar event happens in the future.

Take a look at the research happening here at the Central Maryland Research and Education Center in Upper Marlboro (CMREC-UM). Even though we are one of the smallest Research and Education Centers (RECs) in the State, our scope of research is quite vast.  Here at CMREC-UM you will find research on agronomy, cover crops, forestry, horticulture, irrigation, livestock, water quality and more.