During the years I ran my family’s blueberry farm, the weeks we ran a u-pick made for some of my fondest memories. But as any grower can tell you, u-picks aren’t all fun and games. They can be tricky to pull off successfully. In the grand scheme of things, our u-pick operations only accounted for 2-3% of our revenue, but I never considered them unsuccessful. Here are some of the tactics I think helped us to be successful.
The University of Florida blueberry breeding program has released two new southern highbush blueberry cultivars that should be available to growers in 2025. These cultivars were selected for the evergreen production system and have performed very well in on-farm trials in both South-Central and Central Florida. They are both early season producers with very high yields, very firm fruit, excellent flavor, and good evergreen foliage. These new releases are “FL17-141” and “FL19-006.”
The Florida flower thrips (Frankliniella bispinosa Morgan) are a pest of southern highbush blueberries in Florida that are present during bloom. Larvae and adults feed on all parts of the flowers (ovaries, styles, petals) and developing fruit. Feeding damage can reduce pollination of the injured blooms, and therefore the quantity and quality of fruit produced from those blooms. Adult females can also cause indirect injury to fruit when laying their eggs inside flower tissues (Figure 1 c). The newly hatched larvae create holes in the flower tissue when they emerge, resulting in scarring of the fruit.
January – March
We spent the past three winters in a La Niña pattern, which favors warm and dry weather in Florida. This year, a mature and strong El Niño pattern is present in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is expected to continue during the winter and spring seasons. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is the interannual fluctuation of the atmosphere–ocean system in the equatorial Pacific and it has three phases: warm phase (El Niño), cold phase (La Niña), and Neutral.
With a wet El Niño winter forecasted for Florida in 2024, growers should focus on plans to minimize and manage flower and fruit fungal diseases. Anthracnose fruit rot and Botrytis blossom blight are the most prevalent and significant winter and early spring diseases in Florida.
The Blueberry Advisory System (BAS) is a weather-based alert system that signals Florida blueberry growers when environmental conditions are favorable for the development of anthracnose fruit rot (AFR) and provides other data to help growers manage this disease.
Virtually all blueberry fields in Florida are subject to late winter or early spring freezes, which can cause serious reductions in yield. This is a list of activities for freeze preparation. The list was originally published by Mike Mainland in the North Carolina Blueberry News, Vol. 7, No. 1and has been modified by IFAS faculty and FBGA board members.
Untimely late winter and early spring freezes are one of the most problematic and yield-limiting phenomena that routinely impact blueberry production in Florida as well as other southeastern states. If you grow blueberries in Florida, it’s a pretty safe bet that you will need to protect your crop from freezing temperatures during the upcoming pre-bloom, bloom and/or post-bloom periods. I can only think of one year during the last 25 when we did not need to run overhead irrigation to freeze protect our blueberry research plots at the Plant Research and Education Unit in Citra. However, in a different year, we had to run overhead irrigation on nearly 20 separate nights. One truth about Florida’s winter weather is that it is consistently inconsistent. This article will review information that growers will likely want to consider when making decisions about freeze protection this coming year.
I started this letter listing a bunch of threats facing Florida Blueberry growers in 2024. As I penciled my list, I began to realize I was being too negative and had no business inviting my fellow growers to a pointless pity party. After all, as I write, the excitement of a new year is right around the corner. Now is the time to look on the bright side, and I submit the glass is half full and we have many reasons to anticipate a prosperous season. I’m going on the record that I’m optimistic about the 2024 Florida blueberry crop and its potential for a big improvement over the past few years.
Happy New Year! At The Blueberry News, we like to start the year with optimism and hope.
Blueberry gall midge larvae feed on blueberry floral bud tissues, causing brown lesions, and bud death and abortion (Figure 1). When there is heavy gall midge injury, the bloom will typically be lighter since many of these buds will abort, resulting in decreased fruit set. It should be noted that poor fruit set and excessive dropping of undeveloped green fruit can also be caused by poor pollination.
Many have heard the phrase “The Label is the Law,” and while true, labels convey so much more than the law. Every pesticide that is registered with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must go through rigorous testing, and then painstaking precision is used to write the label that goes on every product. These labels have information about what the product is, safety information, use information, storage, and disposal. Essentially, the label is the instruction manual for the pesticide. Although it may be tempting to simply jump straight to the application rate for your particular crop, this disregards very important information contained on the label. You must read and follow the entire label, not just the application rate for your crop.
As fall approaches, some blueberry growers are likely considering the possibility of using hydrogen cyanamide (HC) to minimize the negative effects of inadequate winter chill accumulation, which can be a common occurrence in Florida. HC is not compatible with the evergreen or organic production systems. However, conventional growers who use the deciduous production system may find a use for HC depending on a number of factors.
Pretty much everyone in the Florida Blueberry Industry knows what a challenging year it was. Remember Hurricane Ian, the December holiday freezes, huge crop input inflation, labor cost escalation and labor regulation, overall lower grower prices for our fruit, even increasingly serious insect pressure despite our best efforts.
