Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

Hurricane Sandy southeast of Cape Hatteras, NC, October, 27, 2012. Source: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2279

As Hurricane Sandy starts to slip northward, there are some things that caneberry growers in NC and adjacent states should think about. First if you are in eastern NC, you may have wet soils. If your soils tend to stay wet, caneberry plants do not like wet feet. I asked Dr. Phil Brannen Plant Pathologist, from UGA, and here are his thoughts on diseases:

"Assuming that drainage is good, long-term saturated soils could still result in root rot from Phytophthora, but I have rarely seen this in well-drained soils.  Assuming that there is a risk, Ridomil Gold SL can be applied through drip tape; phosphonates could be applied foliarly, assuming that leaves are still active.  There would be no harm in either of these actions, and application of a fungicide could provide some breathing room till the soils dry out.  The plantings may be too wet for a tractor and sprayer to enter for some time, so all applications may be delayed (unless drip-tape Ridomil is the preferred route)."

He also mentioned pruning and leaf spots:  "Any open, fresh wounds would be susceptible to cane blight, but there is really limited value in spraying a fungicide days after pruning -- especially if it has been wet for days already (infections would likely have already occurred).  Not sure therefore of the value of spraying for cane blight at this point, but some systemic fungicides may provided limited kickback if applied within a couple of days.  

Relative leaf spots, I suspect we are far enough along towards leaf fall that we would not currently worry about these."

If you are in western NC, and you are growing fall fruiting red raspberries, your season like ours came to an end abruptly today with the snowfall in the mountains. (We pulled the plastic off late last week in anticipation of this storm). We had a nice crop of berries under high tunnels still producing fruit. Most of our early and mid season primocane fruiting cultivars were done, however, Nantahala had a week or so left and Nova had a couple of weeks left. Our harvest crew was not too upset.

The winds have been strong and may blow some of the leaves off your plants. This is a bit early, but in general the plants have finished the majority of their root building for the season and the lost leaves will not impact your plants too much. Winds can also do damage to your trellises and plants may be laying on the ground. Get the plants up and off the ground as soon as possible and as Phil mentioned, hold off on pruning, until you can get a fungicide on.

Those are my thoughts for now. Let me know if you have any particular questions or concerns: Gina_Fernandez@ncsu.edu

Blackberry Yield Data

Growers that had hail damage to their blackberry crop this spring are trying to estimate their crop losses. I have been asked to provide recent yield data. We collected this data at the Piedmont Research Station from 2008-2010. Table 1 is our actual data, Table 2 is converted to yield per acre based on our original plant density.

I realize that the plants fill in the rows after you plant and that it may be hard to figure out how many plants there are per acre. However, for our purposes it is easier to present yield per plant based on the original planting density, e.g. plants were set 4 ft apart in the row and rows are 12 ft apart. This would be the equivalent of 907 plants per acre.  Keep in mind that there can be distortion of data as we multiply up from our 20 plants to 907. Your plant density may have been different and this will change the yield/acre. In addition, actual grower yields may be higher or lower and may vary due to trellis type, year to year yield variations, and other production practices.

Sorry about the quality of the print, pasting tables into blogger is not that easy. Contact me if you want a copy of this data in PDF form.

Blackberry harvest update...good news, bad news

We visited several farms over the past 2 days, starting with the Twilight Tour in Henderson County. Overall the crop is looking good and farmers are either gearing up to harvest or have been picking for a week or more. This year as is the case in most years, there is both good news and bad news. 

First the good news. In the past couple of years, the North Carolina growers had their crop ripen at the same time as Georgia. However, this year the Georgia crop has finished which means that most of the berries that are being shipped for the next couple of weeks will be from North Carolina! There should be abundant supplies in the local markets as well. 

Unfortunately for some growers, spotty hail storms over the past 2 weeks have damaged ripening fruit in the field. Currently, there is no tolerance for damaged fruit for shipping. So this means that some growers have had to find alternative markets for their damaged berries and some fields have had to be discarded.  The picture above shows some of the damage that occurred. The irony of this situation is that the fruit tastes great. 

There are promotions running in the chain stores this week and will be more in the upcoming weeks.  Now is the time to indulge in some fresh blackberry fruit snacks, salads and deserts.