market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Market Farming
List archive
- From: "Dalew Farms" <dalew AT phonenet.ca>
- To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: [Market-farming] Swede Midge
- Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:24:59 -0400
Hello,
I'm curious to know how other farms are faring who
have to contend with Swede Midge!? If you can share anything that you have
tried and has worked well, and anything you have tried that did not work that
would be great!
I live in an area where the cash croppers grow a
significant amount of canola, and our swede midge pressure is now very
high. I haven't actually done any trapping, but all the signs are there
and a 0% harvestable yield on broccoli also tells you how high our levels
are. I believe that we first started running into Swede Midge problems
either the year of, or the year after a neighbor bordering our farm grew canola,
and its only gotten worse since. (That's from my memory, I don't write down my
neighbors' crop rotations ha!) At first I did not realize that it
was Swede Midge, but another close by market gardener put me onto the Swede
Midge issue. The first year we had a problem, it only affected broccoli,
and only a portion of our crop did not head out. The loss was minor, and I
wrote it off at that time as just a problem related to weather and/or high
levels of flea beetles shortly after transplanting, since it only affected
a batch or two. But last year we had almost a complete loss on
broccoli, and lots of problems with our other brassicas as well. This year
so far we haven't been able to harvest anything except our earliest batch of
kohlrabi, all the other other batches of brassicas have been complete write
offs.
This is the first year that I've "known" ahead of
time what I was facing, and I've been trying to spray a combination of pyganic
and spinosad every 7-10 days. (not tank mixing, rotating
treatments). At first when we only had a few small batches of brassicas in
the field, I was using a backpack sprayer, now I am using our field sprayer
with the tractor. I hope, but am not certain yet that the field
sprayer gives us better coverage, and hopefully control (than the backpack
sprayer) and maybe our later batches of brassicas we may get something
harvestable.
The grower who put me onto the Swede Midge issue
has been using row covers on all of his brassicas and he is reporting some
cautious success so far. He told me he got a 40% harvestable broccoli crop
recently, but that he thinks the bugs are still getting in around where weeds
may grow at the edges of row covers etc.
Anyways, I would love to hear experiences from
other growers on how you've done at dealing with Swede Midge, what's worked and
what hasn't!
Thanks
Dave
Dalew Farms
Web: www.dalewfarms.ca E-mail: dalew AT phonenet.ca Phone: (705)594-1823 Fax: (705)594-1834 10781 Hwy 64, Lavigne Ont P0H 1R0 |
- [Market-farming] Swede Midge, Dalew Farms, 07/31/2013
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.