For much of the province, there hasn't been a significant wet period since last Wednesday, May 13th. The western end of the province had a significant amount of rain on Sunday, but Central NS and East had no rain to speak of. The warm and dry conditions have push fruit bud development across the province with disease pressure being quite low.
Many fields in main land Nova Scotia are at or beyond 40-50% F2. There are exceptions throughout the province where North facing slopes or fields that had high snow loads on them are very slow to develop. This has resulted in fields that are close together developing at drastically different rates. Luckily to date much of the province has had very few infection periods.
We are still at risk to Monilinia infection if there is a significant wet period within the next week, and control measures should be considered if a wet period occurs.
If dry conditions persist, disease risk will decrease rapidly over the next week, particularly on early developing fields.
Here is a list of later developing fields in Central NS:
Farmington - 45% F2
Pigeon Hill - 50% F2 (1 pin and 1 mature cup)
Westchester - > 40% F2 (1 nearly mature cup)
Spiddle Hill - 40% F2
Dean - field 1 - 65% F2; field 2 - 8% F2
Cape Breton - 21% F2
With the exception of a couple of slow developing fields, the development in many areas is just slightly behind our reports from last year (approx. 1/2 week). Plant development has caught up rapidly over the last couple of weeks.
With plant development moving along, growers should be considering their sprout year herbicide applications over the next week or so.
