A preview to nut maturity date
16 July 2015 Last week, I collected group of well known pecan cultivars to check on the progress of nut development. Sometime during the month of July, all pecan cultivars enter a phase of rapid...
View ArticleFall webworm: Nobody's home
Driving down the highway you'll see numerous webs up in trees all created by Fall webworm larvae. These caterpillars are general leaf feeders that colonize numerous hardwood tree species including...
View ArticleBe careful to remove the right buds during young tree training
In several posts on this blog, I have stresses the importance of removing stalked buds from rapidly growing young trees to encourage the growth of a strong central leader tree. The photo at right...
View ArticleMid-summer nut drop
A quick walk out into the pecan orchard at this time of year and you might spot several green nuts on the ground (photo at right). A quick look at the fallen nuts and you will probably find some...
View ArticleSpraying for stinkbugs and early pecan weevil
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we've been seeing quite a few nuts drop from stinkbug feeding. On top of that, the 2 inches of rain we received yesterday should bring out the first flush of...
View ArticleMid-summer pecan cultivar evaluation
Last week, I pulled nut samples from 14 pecan cultivars to get a quick assessment of performance for the first half of 2015. I was most interested in disease susceptibility but also I wanted to...
View ArticleSecond summer generation Fall webworm egg masses spotted
I was mowing around my pecan trees when I spotted several dime-sized egg masses deposited on the undersize of pecan leaves (photo at right). The eggs are very light green in color but are largely...
View ArticleNut thinning Lakota pecan with a trunk shaker
When we first released the Lakota pecan cultivar, I warned growers that, when this tree matures (20+ years old), it tends to over-produce. Over-production reduces nut quality at harvest and limits...
View ArticleEmerging fall webworms killed by insecticide aimed at pecan weevil
During the first week of August we sprayed our pecan grove with an insecticide to control emerging pecan weevils and stinkbugs. A few days later, I reported seeing many fall webworm egg masses on...
View ArticlePecan kernels fill during August
Yesterday, I collected nut samples from nine different pecan cultivars to check the progress of kernel filling. I was somewhat surprised to find so many cultivars still in the water stage this late...
View ArticleSpraying for pecan weevil
In our little corner on SE Kansas, we've had over 6 inches of rain in a 5 day period. While the rain is welcomed at this time of year to help fill pecan kernel, wet soil conditions have lead slow...
View ArticleThat tree is not a Giles!
Years ago, we started a scionwood orchard to produce high quality scions for growers to graft onto their seedling pecan trees. When we established this orchard, we took great care to graft with...
View ArticleLate season aphids
The leaves of our pecan trees are starting to take on a sticky and shiny appearance (photo at right). That's because foliage is now covered with honeydew, the by-product of aphids feeding on the...
View ArticleHow full are pecan kernels today?
The first day of September was a good day to check on the development of the 2015 pecan crop. I collected nuts from 14 different pecan cultivars ranging from the very early ripening Warren 346 to...
View ArticleFall Webworm outbreak
The white webs are everywhere. Street trees, yard trees, and trees along the highway all seem to be covered by numerous colonies of the fall webworm. Last month, I photo graphed some fall webworm...
View ArticlePecan crop advancing towards shuck split
This week, I drove through our field trials to check our earliest ripening pecan cultivars for signs of shuck split. Every year the order of ripening among cultivars is a little different and this...
View ArticleImpact of scab on Peruque pecan
Peruque is an old pecan cultivar originating in the Mississippi floodplain outside of St. Charles, Mo. Unfortunately, Peruque is scab susceptible and this year scab was especially difficult to keep...
View ArticleEarly ripening pecan cultivars begin shuck split
Canton, 22 Sept 2015 This morning I checked our cultivar trials for nuts with opened shucks. I found several of our early ripening cultivars had split shucks including; Canton, Norton, Osage, Faith,...
View ArticleMore pecan cultivar ripen in late September
Colby, 25 Sept. 2015 This morning I took a ride in our hydraulic lift so I could get up into pecan tree canopies to check on nut ripening. I found that 10 more cultivars had split shuck including;...
View ArticleScab on 'Mandan' pecan
The cultivar release notes published when Mandan was first made available to the public claimed that nuts produced by this tree are resistant to pecan scab. Although not extremely susceptible to...
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