11 Sep Agronomy Update – Sept 11

Hi everyone,

Obviously, the topic of conversation is the rainfall amounts from the long weekend. Courtesy of the PEI Dept of Ag weather stations, here are some of the totals from Friday through Monday:

• O’Leary: 164.6 mm
• Mount Royal: 142.2 mm
• Tyne Valley: 223.8 mm
• Kensington: 190.4 mm
• Tryon: 133.6 mm
• New Glasgow: 181.4 mm
• Harrington: 165 mm
• Orwell: 98.6 mm
• Johnston’s River: 93.6 mm
• Mount Hope: 104.6 mm
• Dover: 111.8 mm
• Souris:107.6 mm

East Prince/West Queens were particularly hard hit with rainfall, with multiple locations showing above 200 mm across 4 days from other weather stations. Personally, I was surprised how good many fields looked on Monday/Tuesday after all that rain. There is standing water in the low spots of some fields or in the sprayer tracks, but I had expected worse for the volumes of rain that we had.  Unfortunately, another 20 mm of rain yesterday was not needed.  Here’s hoping we get a stretch of no rainfall and sunny days to let the fields drain and firm up.

All this to say that it is imperative to mark out parts of fields now where water laid between the rows for extended periods of time. These are the areas where soft rot, pink rot, Pythium and other tuber rot diseases are destined to cause issues in storage. Particularly as many fields look likely to have above average yields, it is important that we mark potential problem areas now and either dig them last or have them directed to temporary storage. Let’s collectively learn the lessons of 2018, 2022, and other wet falls to ensure that we don’t bring compromised potatoes into storage which can jeopardize an entire bin. Low spots and wheel tracks should ideally be dug last, if at all possible. I know this is logistically burdensome…but I expect it will be necessary in many fields this fall.

Air Spore:

 I expect this will be the last week of spore collections, as we are now down to just a few farms with active collections this week. We have gone an entire season again with no late blight spore detections, with none detected in NB either.  The closest I’ve heard about a late blight infection this year is Michigan.

Bortrytis (grey mold) counts remain high. Bortrytis loves cool temps and damp conditions, so we are in the prime conditions for grey mold development. This would be an excellent time for Bravo/Echo in the spray schedule to help protect the canopy from grey mold progression.

Additional notes:

• This is also the last week for the Aphid Alert program.  Thanks to Rodrigo dos Santos and Julia Richardson with the PEI Dept of Ag, Christine Parsons, and all the growers who participated in the program this year for doing your part to keep this surveillance program running.
• Aphid numbers continue to trend downward, with less than 0.5 aphids per trap collected early this week. There are a small number of green peach aphids around, but at much lower numbers than we usually see at this time of year.  Many seed fields are already top-killed, with more scheduled for top-killing in the next day or two.
• If you are a grower that plans to be harvesting in the next couple of weeks and would like to have the Smart Spud run through harvest/handling equipment, please give me a call. I am looking for a couple of farms that would be interested in doing some runs with the Smart Spud so that we can record some videos for extension purposes.
• I am hoping to line up a couple of fields for a trial on variable rate Reglone application, for fields that are mostly dead but that have a few green spots that could be sprayed by drone or VR ground sprayer. Please feel free to call/text me if you think you might have a candidate field.
• After this week, Agronomy Updates from this office may be more sporadic, as the monitoring program end and as Christine and I pivot into harvesting trials this fall. As important topics arise, I’ll be sure to send updates.

Have a great weekend,

Ryan