With March behind us, plants are in greenhouses and the growing season is approaching. Refresh yourself on tools for managing pests here.
Building knowledge about pests
While the exact mix of problems we see varies each growing season, there are some problems we should be ready for every year. Some tools for learning about pests we regularly see in Minnesota include…
Insect management for vegetable crops lists and links out to detailed pages on pests we see regularly in different Minnesota crop families
Disease management for vegetable crops lists and links out to pages on vegetable disease by crop family
Subscribe to our newsletter! If you’re reading this, you are likely already subscribed to the UMN Fruit and Vegetable News. We will be releasing weekly crop updates to help you get up to speed with whatever pest issues emerge in 2024.
Getting preventative measures in place
Now is the time of year we can take prevention measures for different pests. If you have pests you have struggled with in the past, brush up on them and see if there are preventative measures you can still implement, for example, rotation or netting to cover plants.
Diagnostic aids
Identifying plant problems during the growing season can be tricky.
What’s wrong with my plant? allows you to focus on issues that cause the type of damage you are seeing in the plant you are growing. For example, if you see spots on your tomato plants, you can use this tool to pull up a list with pictures of things that commonly cause spots on tomato leaves, or fruit, or stem.
There are apps that can help with weed ID, but they aren’t always accurate and shouldn’t be the only thing relied on for weed identification.
Click here to read more umn.edu
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Categories: Minnesota, Crops, Fruits and Vegetables