Well maybe there are a few stragglers, but the majority of the crop is sitting in a freezer somewhere.
This was a challenging year, with high blueberry maggot adult captures in July, SWD appearing earlier than hoped and the significant amount of fruit and leaf disease increased but hot and humid weather throughout most of late June and July.
I would like to have a debrief with growers and scouts over the next couple of weeks to see how SWD monitoring worked, how effective they felt applied controls worked and how much damage they saw. I will be contacting various growers to see how things went from their perspective.
We've learned quite a bit, from a research standpoint this year, but the learning curve for managing this pest in a wild blueberry situation is still pretty steep.
Some things we do know:
1) SWD is throughout mainland NS
2) SWD will lay eggs in lowbush blueberry
3) SWD adults will begin to appear in Northern NS blueberry fields in early to mid August (give or take a week depending on the year)\
4) Picking early and fast is stressful, but really goes a long way to avoiding the large adult populations later in the season.
We will be giving growers updates and new approaches to this pest at the AGM and throughout the winter. Stay tuned.
