Hello Fruit Growers, Most of you have probably heard that Gil Barden died last Thursday after an accident on the farm. Gil was a great grower and a great friend to many of us. I’ve known Gil for 40 years and he has always impressed me with his apple growing knowledge and his willingness to […]

Greetings, I hope your crops didn’t suffer too much from this morning’s frost. According to weather stations in RI on Cornell’s NEWA network, it went down to 27 degrees in Scituate. There are 5 new weather stations in RI connected to NEWA. Four of the weather stations were purchased and installed by the RI Fruit […]

Hi Fruit Growers, Looking at the RI NEWA weather stations, it looks like this morning it went down to 27 degrees at a Scituate weather station. This is a separate weather station than the RIFGA weather station in North Scituate which recorded a low temperature of 29 degrees. 27 degrees probably damaged some fruit; 29 […]

Hi Fruit Growers, I know this hot weather is pushing fruit trees and berries too far too fast. It’s scary! Looking at the extended forecast, no frost is predicted at this time. I hope to visit some apple and blueberry farms over the next week to check flower buds for winter moth caterpillars. We haven’t […]

With the warm/hot weather this week, I expect all winter moth eggs to have hatched by now. I had very few eggs to monitor for winter moth egg hatch this spring. That’s a good thing! I set up three tree bands in November – one tree in Kingston and two trees in Charlestown. Usually, this […]

We are seeing a new disease of beech trees throughout Rhode Island – beech leaf disease (BLD). It’s caused by a foliar nematode and can kill American and European beech trees. The disease was first seen in Ohio in 2012 and quickly spread east. It was found in RI in 2020 in Ashaway. In 2020 […]

Hi Fruit Growers, I’m sure you are all looking forward to the wind settling down. It’s been pretty crazy lately. I hope to see many of you at the in-person twilight meeting next Wednesday, May 18, at 5:30. The meeting is at Spencer Morris’s cider orchard at 71 Long Lane, Warren RI The UMass Fruit […]

Winter moth update, April 16, 2022 Winter moth eggs finished hatching this past week. Now, and for the next week or two, is a good time to check your apple and blueberry buds for winter moth caterpillars. Caterpillar frass (insect poop) is much easier to find than actual caterpillars. I’ve seen one small apple orchard […]

Winter moth numbers had been decreasing for several years, but last year we saw a bit of an uptick in the population! According to the DEM June 2021 aerial survey, 150 acres were defoliated by winter moth caterpillars in 2021, and I saw many caterpillars causing damage to apple trees and blueberry bushes in southern […]