Insect Pest - True Bugs, Thrips and Mites

Over the years high tunnel (HT) production of vegetables have enabled growers to extend their vegetable production time by 3-5 months. Producing earlier and later season vegetables compared with field production. Though at times it seems HT vegetables have fewer insect problems this is not true and certain pests need to be watched for and anticipated.

Woodlands are under increasing pressure from both native and invasive insects or diseases. Insect or disease management providers are listed here.

Using Nitrate-N Petiole Sap -Testing for Better Nitrogen Management in Vegetable Crops

I have seen several sweet corn fields lately that have sulfur deficiencies (fig 1). One of the possible reasons we are seeing more S deficiency is because less sulfur is being deposited into the soil from the atmosphere due to reductions in acid rain. In 1986 about 24 lbs/a of sulfate were deposited in Maryland soils per year, however in 2011 it was closer to just 8 lbs/a each year. Organic matter supplies most of the sulfur to the crop, but sulfur must be mineralized to sulfate-S to be taken up by crop plants.

Vegetables have a relatively high nitrogen requirement and at times growers apply too much fertilizer-N that contributes to ground and surface water pollution. Fertilization can be made more efficient by plant analysis. Plant tissue (petiole) nitrate testing is a way of monitoring the nitrogen condition of the crop during the growing season. This is an especially useful method as the petiole is a very good indicator of current N supply and management practices such as fertigation allow for corrective measures when deficiencies are found.

By now almost all growers have started transplant production or have hired someone else to grow their transplants. With all of the important things that go into transplant production one of the sanitation factors that is somewhat neglected is weed control. Figure 1 shows the outside edge of a high tunnel production house in February. The grower was getting ready to drop seed in just a few days after they cleaned up the house from the fall growing season. This particular grower had been having intermittent problems with thrips (and consequently tomato spotted wilt virus) and two spotted spider mites in their production house.

Physiological Tomato Fruit Disorders