Early season disease management in 2022
Mike Basedow, Tree Fruit Specialist
Eastern New York Commercial Horticulture
Winter finally came again in mid-January, and we had reasonable snow fall through February and into mid-March, during which came in the form of sporadic snowstorms. Snow cover is consistently over, and while it's still cool in the evenings, we've had considerable bouts of warm temperatures often exceeding 60F. In the Hudson Valley and Long Island, green tip is presently happening or imminent. The rest of the production areas in NY may still have a week or more before bud break. While we've had some bursts of warm weather and in the coming week, there are cooler days forecasted for the week, which could slow tree development. Overall, the season will be upon us shortly, and we need to consider early season management for apple scab. In 2021, there was a decent amount of rainfall in early to mid-April, but little in May to June, which was characterized by sporadic, but hot (>75F) heavy thunderstorms and July more so. Still with the drought from 2020 and the lack of rain from tight cluster to petal fall, my unsprayed trees of several different cultivars had only moderate levels of apple scab. Not surprisingly, there were no reports of apple scab control failures in commercial orchards anywhere in NY.
Early season disease management in 2022 (pdf; 274KB)
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