As we wait patiently for the ground to dry and our seedlings to grow, take a moment to consider your strategy for maintaining plant health. If you haven’t started already, it is time to make sure that your pest monitoring programs are in place for the season. For those of you growing in high tunnels,[Read More…]
Insect and Mite Management
Striped cucumber beetle can be a significant pest in watermelon production systems. These pests can cause feeding damage to roots, stems, leaves, and flowers of plants as well as the watermelon fruit itself (Figure 1). In large enough densities, this damage can lead to economic loss. The economic threshold for striped cucumber beetles in watermelon[Read More…]
Insecticides are often needed to control pests in vegetable crops, but in crops that require pollinators we often worry about the impact those insecticides may have on those pollinators (Figure 1). In the summer of 2018, a team of researchers at Purdue University explored the effects of insecticide applications on watermelon yield across Indiana, considering[Read More…]
Many of us may forget about the pesky squash vine borer until it’s too late. This pest of cucurbit crops tends to be sporadic in our region; you are either battling it every year or it hardly makes an appearance. The squash vine borer is a member of the clear-winged moths, a unique group of[Read More…]
Corn earworm moth numbers have been relatively low this season until recently, as numbers have exploded in pheromone traps. These moths will lay their eggs on numerous crops, with late-market sweet corn being particularly vulnerable at this time. Tomato and pepper growers should also be aware of the potential for earworm (also called fruitworm) damage,[Read More…]
Several caterpillars in the ear can be very similar in appearance and habits, so identification to species of some of the worms in ears can be tricky. Note that, in general, you cannot use overall body color or damage for identification. Some identification tips, though not foolproof, appear below for the corn earworm, western bean[Read More…]
It’s not uncommon for us to get calls from growers who are expressing concern about a particular insecticide product that is not working as well as the growers would like. Often, growers will suggest that Product X is no good or that the target insect has now developed resistance to that particular insecticide. Before we[Read More…]
Despite the wet start to the summer that we are experiencing, we have some growers reporting spider mites in field watermelons (Figure 1). This pest is typically associated with hot, dry weather and can be especially problematic in crops grown under protection, such as in high tunnels. Spider mites often move into a field from[Read More…]
Bacterial wilt is one of the most destructive diseases in high tunnel cucumber production. The reason bacterial wilt is so important is because, like other wilt diseases, it ties up with the entire vascular system of a plant, causing systemic effects (Figure 1). The relatively less important roles that other cucumber diseases play also make[Read More…]