Fruit and Vegetable News

Madeline Wimmer- UMN Fruit Production Extension Educator This fruit update contains information about… Apples Seasonal fruit ripening updates: Fruit color development, pre-harvest drop, and russeting. Grapes Problems with late season insects: Multicolored Asian lady beetle (MALB), social wasps, and fruit flies + a note about sour rot. Blackberries Cultivars suitable for the Upper Midwest. Management practices and harvest updates. June-bearing strawberries Floral buds are setting now for next year’s crop. 2024 Fruit and Veg Updates survey: We want to hear from you! Apples Images: Various early-season apple varieties are beginning to show up at the farmer's market in Rochester, MN (Zone 5a). This year, growers have reported noticeable increases in color development, which could related to the occurrence of cooler night temperatures followed by warm, sunny days in SE MN. Seasonal ripening updates: fruit color development, pre-harvest drop, and russeting Apples have been going for a ri...

Authors: Marissa Schuh and Natalie Hoidal Growers are bringing a gorgeous variety of vegetables to markets and CSA boxes around the state. Parts of the state received some extreme winds that damaged crops earlier this week. Looking ahead, the NOAA 8-14 day forecast is calling for above normal temperatures and below average precipitation . Read on for information on aster yellows and late blight, as well as other crop considerations at this point in the growing season. Late Blight found in Madison, WI area This morning (8/28), late blight was confirmed on tomatoes in Dane County, Wisconsin (think Madison). While we are approaching the final month of the growing season, this disease can still kill tomato and potato plants quickly. This disease is easiest to spot when humidity is high, and leaves in the center of a dense canopy are often the first to get infected. Leaf spots are a brown-gray, sometimes described as greasy. You may see white spores on the underside of the leaf. As spo...

Annalisa Hultberg, Extension Educator, Food Safety           If you use well or surface water in the production of your fresh fruits and vegetables,   E. coli can be present in water and contaminate your produce or equipment. You might assume your well water is safe, but without testing it, you cannot tell if the well is failing or surface water is getting in. But what do you tell the water lab when you call? Follow this script to help navigate that conversation. What to test for? For bacterial contamination, you will want to test for the presence of generic  E. coli  since this is the best indicator of the presence of fecal contamination in your water. You might add things like lead, arsenic or nitrates/nitrites. Where to find a lab near you Laboratories that test water quality may be private or public, such as county-operated. A complete list of certified labs is available from the  Minnesota Department of Health here.  ...

Madeline Wimmer- UMN Fruit Production Extension Educator This fruit update contains information about… Determining fruit ripeness Apples Starch-iodine testing for ripeness. Grapes Testing grapes for ripeness. Aronia About aronia berries. Viking, an aronia hybrid cultivar. Harvest indicators. Finding a market for aronia berries Image: High-density trained apple trees are nearly ready for harvest at Apples R Us, as the orchard anticipates beginning to harvest Minneiska (SweeTango®) and Zestar! within the next week or two. Apples R Us primarily distills their apples into specialty spirits (Olmsted County; Zone 5a). It’s nearing the end of August and—while many harvest dates have come and gone for fruit crops like honey berries, June-bearing strawberries, currants, and blueberries in many Minnesotan regions—some crops like grapes, apples, aronia berries, and others are tip-toeing into harvest season. Determining fruit ripeness As fruits begin to ripen and approach their anticipated harves...

Authors: Marissa Schuh and Natalie Hoidal Seasonable weather continues, NOAA is calling for below normal temperatures through the start of September. Read on for information on managing asparagus for maximum yields, updates on tomato ripening, and vine crop pests. Soil Health Funding Opportunity Through MDA Applications close the 30th for a unique granting program aimed at helping growers purchase or retrofit equipment to help implement soil health measures. See the MDA’s website for more information : https://www.mda.state.mn.us/soil-health-grant Crop Updates Asparagus: Asparagus plants still have another month or so of growth before they go totally dormant for the winter. Towards the end of the season we often see foliar diseases starting to build up. This is important, because disease pressure in the fall can cause early dieback, which translates to less energy stored in the roots for spring. These diseases include rust, purple spot, cercospora leaf spot, and Fusarium. Scout fo...

How can growers maintain soil health in high tunnels and access funding to implement conservation practices on their farms? Extension is hosting two on-farm field days in September to showcase vegetable farmers that have used Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) funding to construct high tunnels and implement other conservation practices on their farms. Both field days are free to attend. Monday, Sept 9 | 4-6 pm | California Street Farm, Northeast Minneapolis John Brezinka from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and Elyssa Eull, farm manager at California Street Farm, will lead attendees on a walk-through of the farm’s existing conservation practices and their eligibility for NRCS cost-share programs. Some of the conservation practices Elyssa uses on her farm include crop rotation, cover crops, no-till, and buffer strips. She also grows in a high tunnel, funded by the NRCS’ EQIP program. Hosted by the Twin Cities Metro Growers Network, a collaboration betw...

I Authors: Marissa Schuh and Natalie Hoidal After a few days of heat, things were unseasonably cool over the last week. Things are more seasonable now, and things will continue to be on the cool side . Read on for updates on identifying wildlife damage, turning over high tunnels, tomato issues, and garlic. Vertebrate pests Now is the time of year we get calls about deer, racoons, and birds doing the most heartbreaking damage they do – taking an exceptionally rude single bite out of stuff we are ready to harvest. Deterring animals once they have tasted how good your crops are is very difficult – it takes a lot of scare to overpower the memory of how delicious fresh sweet corn or ripe watermelon is. Noting which animals are doing the most damage can help you have your scares in place before animals find your crops next year. If deciding what can still be harvested, remember to take food safety into consideration – it is best to leave a harvest buffer around areas where there is eviden...

Authors: Marissa Schuh and Natalie Hoidal . Portions of this article were originally published in a 2023 weekly vegetable update . We are entering peak tomato, and markets are flooded with beautiful tomatoes. However, not every tomato we grow is market-ready, read on for tips for diagnosing and managing common tomato fruit issues. Issues caused by tomato physiology Catfacing causes brown scabbing on fruit Catfacing is what we call it when the blossom end scar becomes enlarged and causes growth deformities. Catfacing is not well understood, but researchers think that it can happen when there are cold temperatures during flowering, or significant fluctuations in daily high and low temps. Thrips, high social nitrogen, and especially variety can also play a role. Catfacing. Gerald Holmes, Strawberry Center, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Bugwood.org Growth cracks can occurs both horizontally and laterally on fruit Growth growth cracks occur when we get large flushes of water. Cracks can be l...

Marissa Schuh, IPM Extension Educator. Adapted from a 2021 article . After a rainy growing season, many growers have probably wished they could turn off the rain.  There is one type of rain that growers can partially control-- weed seed rain.   Every time a weed goes to seed, dozens to thousands of seeds enter our soil, creating hours of future weeding. As we enter the part of the growing season where many weeds are flowering and getting ready to set seed, this is a key time for us to pull and thwack weeds.  Marestail  seeds move around with the help of white, wind-catching filaments. Photo: Enrico Blasutto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Weeds on our farm comes from our weed seedbank The soil on each farm contains its own mix of weed seeds -- this will reflect the history of the land and how it has been managed over time. When these weed seeds are in the top two inches of soil and receive the right combination of water, temperature, light, and nutrition,...

Annalisa Hultberg, Extension Educator, food safety If you would like to sell your produce to a wholesale customer, you might be asked to get a GAP audit on your produce. This audit is a third-party verification of your on-farm food safety practices, often conducted by the MDA. This is a voluntary program, and the farm pays an annual fee to participate. Here are some programs to help offset the costs of those audits, if you choose to get them to sell your products. What is a GAP audit? As a reminder, a GAP audit is a voluntary program to verify your food safety practices on your farm. It is not a law and it is not a requirement that you participate. However, some buyers such as grocery store chains like Cub or Lunds/Byerlys or Whole Foods, or distributors like Russ Davis require an annual GAP audit on the product that you sell to them. You pay for the audit, often $800 dollars or more per year for the audit as long as you would like to keep the audit current.  Some farm to school pr...