Fruit

Picnic Beetles on Raspberries

Picnic beetles, a small beetle that loves fermenting fruit (and potato salad at picnics), commonly feed on raspberries. The beetle can quickly ruin a ripe raspberry as they burrow around inside the fruit.

What's Bugging Your Garden? Cucumber Beetles

Striped cucumber beetles are little yellow and black striped beetles that are fairly small, but what they lack in size they make up for in numbers and appetite.

Shot Hole Disease in Apricots

Shot hole disease of apricot trees can be identified through symptoms on leaves and fruit. Small holes will appear on leaves while brown lesions with a deep purple band will show up on fruit.

Pollinating Tomatoes in High Tunnels

In field-grown tomatoes the air movement is sufficient to vibrate flowers and achieve pollination. This is not generally true in the high tunnel because there is not sufficient natural wind to vibrate the flowers. High tunnel tomato growers should therefore pollinate their crop by other means.

Earwigs in the Garden: Less-Toxic Control Alternative

Since earwigs provide some ecological service as natural enemies, I hesitate to recommend a pesticide application to control it. As an alternative least-toxic solution, bait trapping the earwigs should work to reduce the insect’s population to the non-threatening levels.

Mulberry Trees

Every year about this time I received a few samples of mulberry trees. This is a very common tree in South Dakota, not so much from being planted by people but from birds.

Biological Control of Pests in High Tunnels

Major insect and mite pests in high tunnels include aphids, thrips, white flies, and spider mites. Biological control uses living organisms (natural enemies) to suppress or limit pest populations to levels that do not cause economic injury to the crop.

Healthy Seeds Make Healthy Plants

Saving seeds is a fun and economical way to produce plants for the next year. There are concerns however when saving seeds about seed-borne diseases.

Grapes for Your Garden

Grapes in the Dakotas? Given an appropriate growing site and care, grape vines can last for decades or more in our climate thanks to the efforts of grape breeders over the past thirty years.

Apple Issues

Learn to identify and manage common apple tree issues including: apple maggot injury, apple scab, cedar apple rust, and fruit cracking.