I will be updating the phone line 902-662-4242 starting next week (late in the day, Tuesdays and Fridays).
I have a first report from south west Nova Scotia.
Remember fruit buds and vegetative buds become susceptible to infection when they reach the F2 and V2 stage. For our purposes we tend to monitor the floral bud (F) buds more closely and gauge our applications around their development.
For a fruit bud to be infected the disease (monilinia) needs to be actively producing spores and weather conditions need to be wet enough for the infection to occur. The colder the temperature the longer the wet period needs to be for there to be an infection.
If the conditions are right producers should consider treating to control monilinia when >40% of the Floral buds have reached the F2 stage.
There are 5 sites reporting:
East Kempt - 12% F2
Sable River - 5% F2
Annapolis - 5% F2
Queens county - 4 fields @ 15% F2, one field at 50% F2
There are no infection periods forecast until early next week.
I will be making another report late in the day on Tuesday, April 25th.
