Fruit and Vegetable News

Project Overview In the summer of 2019, Meg Gable, a UMN Agriculture/Food Business Management student with guidance from Michelle Grabowski, UMN Extension Professor, set out to learn more about how to best manage black rot of cabbage. The goal of the project was to compare susceptible and resistant varieties of cabbage and to determine if removing infected leaves would stop the spread of a black rot infection.

Overview of Black Rot  Black rot is a common disease of crops such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and other brassicas. It is a bacterial infection that moves through the veins of plants, travels to the stem and affects brassica plants in many ways depending on variety and time of infection.

Cabbage is a labor-intensive crop and if infected, black rot can spread easily and destroy an entire crop. However, there is no simple fix for black rot. Seed treatments are effective in preventing disease but there are few options for control once a plant has been infected in the field.
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Respirators are necessary for using certain pesticides safely, including pesticides used in fruit and vegetable production such as Bt and paraquat. To use a respirator safely, you need a medical evaluation and a fit test to ensure that you've chosen the right respirator for your face size and shape, as well as for your health status.

Extension's Pesticide Safety and Environmental Education Program is hosting six free respirator fit test workshops this winter. If you'd like to offer fit testing in your community, you can attend an all day "train the trainer" workshop. If you'd like a fit test for yourself, you can sign up for a 45 minute fit test appointment in the afternoon.



Locations and dates include:Alexandria, March 19th, Alexandria Public Works Meeting Room, 526 Willow Dr, Alexandria, MN 56308Little Falls, March 20th, 405 1st St SE, Little Falls, MN 56345Hutchinson, March 26th, Hutchinson Event Center, 1005 MN-15, Hutchinson, MN 55350Mankato, March 28th,…

Do you need your private pesticide applicator certification?This new course is a supplement to the pesticide applicator manual with interactive videos, graphics, and additional content to help you engage with the curriculum.

We are offering a trial run of this course for free! We’d like to get your feedback on how we can improve the course and how to make it as useful as possible for new pesticide applicators seeking certification. The course will take ~10 hours total, and we recommend splitting it up over six weeks.

Who is this course for?  While the private applicator manual and exam are geared towards field crop producers, the online course has an expanded focus with extra information for specialty crop producers. Our goal is to create a course on pesticide safety and integrated pest management that is useful to growers at all scales of production.

Registration To register for the course, you’ll first need to create a free account with campus.extension.org. Second, fill out the cours…

Authors: Bill Hutchison, Theresa Cira and Bob Koch. The main focus of the Midwest Stinkbug Assistant app is to facilitate early detection and reporting of the invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB; Halyomorpha halys). But, it also helps users identify native stink bug species common to the Midwest region.

This free app, Midwest Stink Bug Assistant, will allow farmers, crop consultants, and the general public to become comfortable distinguishing stink bugs from other bugs and identifying common stink bugs. The app was developed in collaboration with Purdue University, Extension, and first released in April 2018.

The app shows high-resolution, side-by-side comparisons of stink bug species to assist in identification. A key feature of this app allows users to easily report invasive stink bugs such as BMSB which is responsible for millions of dollars in crop losses in the Eastern and Pacific NW regions, and has a wide host range including: sweet corn, apples, tomatoes, peppers, grapes…

Author: Steve Poppe, WCROC Horticulture Scientist. Despite growing consumer interest in local foods, the supply of Minnesota-grown strawberries is extremely limited due to the short growing season and perishability of traditional varieties. While the traditional June-bearing varieties produce fruit from early June through early July, the U of MN West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC) has developed a day-neutral low tunnel system, which offers high quality fruit from late July to October.

The low tunnel system requires hoop-like structures that go over the rows of strawberry plants. In addition, the strawberry plants must be planted into some type of mulch for adequate weed control and to maximize plant growth. In initial studies, we used white-on-black plastic mulch in the row which is a very effective weed control strategy. However, farmers expressed concern over the amount of plastic used, especially since the plastic mulch is not reusable.

This concern led us to our curr…

Farmers across the Midwest are asking how the recent polar vortex impacted fruit trees and grapevines in Minnesota. This question was even explored on Kare11 News on January 31, with UMN grape breeder Matt Clark.
Apples Jim Luby, professor of fruit breeding at the U of MN, cautions that the 2019 polar vortex was the type of cold snap that can cause damage to apples and other fruit trees. However, the amount of damage is yet to be determined, and will vary depending on the variety. Many of the older University of Minnesota varieties have been subjected to these temperatures more frequently in previous decades and lived to tell the tale. European cider apple varieties that are marginally hardy in Zone 4 may suffer significant damage.

The relative cold hardiness of common Minnesota apple varieties is listed here. It should be noted that the "cold hardiness" of a variety refers to the ability of the plants to survive at cold temperatures. According to Jim, those rated as "v…