The dinner meeting will take place on November 29, 2022. We will discuss the future of the Southwest Melon and Vegetable Growers Association and have a presentation about the 2022 watermelon variety trials. The portion of the meeting concerning SWIM future will begin at 5 pm. Dinner will be served at 6 pm. The variety[Read More…]
Wenjing Guan
Vegetable Crops Hotline Editor & Clinical Engagement Associate Professor
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
Area(s) of Interest: Commercial Vegetable and Melon Production
Wenjing Guan's website
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
Area(s) of Interest: Commercial Vegetable and Melon Production
Wenjing Guan's website
The Southwest Melon and Vegetable Grower Association will have their Annual meeting in association with the Illiana Watermelon Association (IWA) on January 20, 2023 in French Lick, IN. Note that this is an earlier date than the meeting usually takes place. PARP and CCH credit will be applied for. The meeting agenda has not been[Read More…]
5I have heard concerns about the size of strawberry plants this year. To provide a timely update of crop status, we created a blog site where there will be frequent updates of plasticulture strawberry status across Indiana. If you are interested in learning the current crop status, please visit this site https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/guan/blog/. We saw a[Read More…]
Row covers are used in plasticulture strawberry production for winter protection. There is also interest in using row covers to encourage fall growth. The different purposes of using row covers affect when farmers should consider applying the row covers, and what type of materials best meet these goals. At Strawberry Chat on Plasticulture production, Brad[Read More…]
We discussed wetting patterns in drip irrigation in a previous article. The take home message is drip irrigation applies water to only a portion of the soil. Uneven water distribution in the soil profile is not a problem as long as enough water is applied to the crop. However, the water wetting pattern might influence[Read More…]
Strawberry Chat in Sept. is about substrate production. You will learn the basics of substrate production and hear about two substrate strawberry production systems. Dr. Chieri Kubota and Mark Kroggel from The Ohio State University talk about root zone management in substrate production and introduce the greenhouse system. Richard Barnes is the owner of Tanglewood[Read More…]
We announced in a previous newsletter article that we are doing a survey to understand the extent of root-knot nematode (RKN) damage on vegetable crops in Indiana. Among the 18 soil samples from high tunnels of 14 farms, RKNs (juvenile or adult) were found in 13 samples at 9 farms. Only 3 farmers knew RKN[Read More…]
For a few years, I participated in the Squash Hunger Trial led by Dr. Annette Wszelaki, where we grew a wide range of winter squashes at multiple states. One year, I failed to manage insects, leading to a squash bug and cucumber beetle outbreak. The insects defoliated leaves (Figure 1) and caused cosmetic damage to[Read More…]
Pumpkin and winter squash should be harvested fully mature to reach their optimal quality and fulfill their potential shelf live. Characters indicating fruit maturity include loss of rind surface gloss, ground spot yellowing, and hardening of the skin to the level that it is resistant to puncture with a thumbnail. Except for some striped varieties,[Read More…]