Hi Everyone, and Welcome!
This is the first official post to our newest blog in the Perennia suite, focusing in on protected production! This will include everything from caterpillar tunnels to fully controlled environment agriculture (CEA) in berries and vegetables. I hope to hit on themes that apply to as many people as possible with the topics selected and monthly newsletters, so bear with me if the first one doesn't quite scratch the itch! You can expect one monthly newsletter here, typically looking ahead at what's to come in the next few weeks, with a few surprise posts when necessary.
I appreciate your virtual visit and time, and am always open to feedback on topics you want to learn more about!
Upcoming Events/Perennia Updates
Below is a summary of some of the industry events that are coming up in the next few weeks! The events listed below are primarily hosted by Perennia, and more information on each of them can be found here.
- TunnelTalk (virtual webinar series)
- May 5 - Hands-On Tutorial for Perennia Spray Guides
- Suitable for organic and conventional growers
- This virtual workshop is designed to showcase all of the features of Perennia's new and improved online pest guides, to better navigate through all the information presented, and help curate personalized spray plans and product selections
- June 2 - Introduction to Hydroponic Production
- Suitable for those who are growing in substrate (pots, containers, grow bags etc), as well as Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) and Deep Water Culture (DWC) setups
- June 23 - Virtual Office Hours
- Bring questions, comments and queries to discuss with myself and your peers! This session is all yours to chat about all things protected production
- July 7 - Virtual Office Hours
- Bring questions, comments and queries to discuss with myself and your peers! This session is all yours to chat about all things protected production
- Backpack Spraying Demo (registration info coming soon)
- In person, June 16 from 2pm - 4 pm
- Kentville, NS
- North American Strawberry Growers Association Summer Tour
- In person, August 12 and 13
- Focusing on Truro and Valley locations
Weather Updates
Growing degree days (GDD) are important for anticipating key dates for crop growth stages, as well as pest emergence and flights. Consider some of the most persistent critters on your farm, and when they typically start to show up.
With the heat we received through the month of March, we are tracking ahead of our typical 5 and 10 year averages, meaning there is a good chance that pest emergence could happen a little bit earlier than what we have observed in 2022 - 2024.
Table 1. Degree day accumulations as of April 28, 2025. All data is taken from the Environment and Climate Change Canada weather station located at the Kentville Research and Development Centre. Calculations are based on a start date of March 1. Provided by Jeff Franklin.
|
Category |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
5-year average |
10-year average |
|
Plant
development (Base 5ºC) |
101.2 |
83.0 |
94.7 |
106.7 |
92.3 |
84.2 |
|
Insect
development (Base 10º) |
20.7 |
21.3 |
21.4 |
29.9 |
22.3 |
22.5 |
Figure 1. Degree day accumulations as of April 28, 2025. All data is taken from the Environment and Climate Change Canada weather station located at the Kentville Research and Development Centre. Calculations are based on a start date of March 1. Provided by Jeff Franklin.
Curious to see how your region compares? Check out Perennia's Farm Data Tools platform, which houses our Growing Degree Calculator. Choose a weather station near you, and crank out those GDD numbers for Base 5 (plant development) or Base 10 (insect development).
Farm Data Tools houses a handful of online tools to help guide management decisions on farm. You do need an account to access and use these tools, but never fear - the account is free to make! It also allows you to set preferences etc, so you won't have to root through weather stations, for example, after that initial setup.
Want more information on our GDD tool? Check out this short video!
Seasonal Considerations: Order of Entry Around the Farm
Biosecurity protocols are going to be one of the best tools we have to reduce disease and insect pressure inside our greenhouses. Whether you are big or small, there are aspects that can be incorporated relatively easily on farm, to try and make that path to entry a little bit harder for those pests who were not invited to the party.
We are oh so fresh to the 2025 growing season, so here are a few considerations around order of entry, to try and engrain some good habits before we don't have the time to think about it too much it:
1 - The tunnel should be visited FIRST (and not just because I like tunnels)
Anyone who is growing transplants, or planning on growing plants indoors and outdoors, is at a very high risk of transmitting field buddies into our greenhouses/tunnels. This can come in on our boots, our clothes, growing tools, or anything that we are bring from outside the space. We want to visit the 'clean' spaces before we hit up the 'dirty' ones.
2 - If we do need to visit the greenhouse multiple times throughout the day in between field tasks, there are a few things we can do:
- designate one (or more) person to be responsible for the greenhouse space, to limit the crossover
- have greenhouse-specific footwear that does not leave the greenhouse. Outdoor shoes stay outdoors, indoor shoes stay indoors
- have greenhouse-specific clothing. This can be a coverall, or a completely different set of clothes.
For those with multiple tunnels, there are a few more layers to this:
1 - plan to visit the tunnels from order of age: youngest --> oldest throughout the day. The young plants are going to be the most susceptible to pest and disease damage compared to older ones, so we want to preserve their health as long as possible
2 - if we DO have signs of diseases or pests cropping up, then we are going to plan our day in order of cleanest to dirtiest. Infested/infected houses will be towards the end of the day, and the clean houses should come first.
Just like plants, insects and diseases really love protected spaces. High humidities and temperatures really help these guys thrive, and if they can get in there, they will. All we are trying to do is make it a little bit harder for them to get into the greenhouse.
Production Tidbits: Monitoring Pollination
While crops like tomatoes and eggplants can self pollinate, there is a lot to be gained from supplementing bumblebees into tunnel houses. In doing so, you are increasing the consistency, quality and size of the fruit on the truss. It can also impact your harvest time- rather than having a slow, inconsistent setting of fruit that ripen at vastly different times, we are able to help that along and harvest the fruit on a cluster in a shorter window when the flowers are well pollinated right when those blooms open.
When it comes to pollinators, we may have quite a few buddies buzzing around, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are visiting the flowers. Pollination compatibility is highly dependent on flower structure, so what works well for one type of plant may not necessarily work well with another!
Regardless of whether or not you supplement hives, we are able to check on, and monitor, the degree of visitation happening to your solanaceous crops.
The anther cone, which is the little bit that sticks out in the centre of our petals, has little signs of bumble bee visitation.
1) We see some darker orange flecks on that anther cone.
2) No flecks translates to no/low visits from bumble bees
3) A fully dark orange/brown anther cone means the visitation is much too high, and/or the tunnel is too humid. High humidity causes the pollen to stick together, and making it much harder for our worker bees to pull out the good stuff.
We can respond a few ways depending on what we are seeing:
1) A few bite marks is great! Everything is progressing as it should, and we can check back next week to make sure that the current rate of pollination is maintained
2) Consider ordering a supplemental hive for your greenhouse. If you already have one, contact your hive supplier on trouble-shooting measures, or to assess whether its time to replace what is sitting in the greenhouse
3) We have a few options for this one:
- Close the hole on your hive part way, to reduce the flow of traffic out of the hive temporarily. Give your crop a few days to recover, and then allow the bees to stream out again.
- If this is a high humidity situation, we want to try and remedy that BEFORE closing the hive off to the crop. Open up the vents (end, side or roof) and turn up your ventilation fans to get that air moving out of the tunnel. Once things are back in balance, expect to see less damage to the anther cones on your tomatoes.
Want more information on this? Check out the recording of one of last year's webinar sessions focused on pollination- Tunneltalk Webinar: Pollination
Pest and Disease: Transplant and Early Production
We have quite a few things to be looking out for in a soil-based greenhouse this time of year
-Damping Off
Damping off can happen both pre- and post- emergence, in soil and potting mix.
Pre-emergence damping off looks like a whole lot of nothing. Seeds that have been planted in our growing media, or directly into the soil, just don't crop up. Post emergence damping off will start to show once the plant has emerged out of the growing media/soil. Small seedlings that seem to die off, typically sinching off at the crown (the part of the stem that comes into contact with the soil).
This is caused by a wide range of fungal pathogens, which are known for residing in infected soils year after year. There are not many tried and true methods to reduce those fungal pathogens, but we do have a few tools in our toolbox to try and reduce the impact on the crop:
- Use clean potting materials year after year. Whether the supplies are new, or washed (seeding trays, carrier trays, domes, shovels etc), those seeds should be given the best possible chance of survival right from the start.
- Consider applying preventative products for root disease, ESPECIALLY if that area has a history of root disease. There are many biological based products which have proved very efficacious against early season fungal disease. These can typically be applied multiple times throughout the season as well, to maintain the level of protection granted.
- Monitor the moisture of your growing media/soil closely! Water holding capacity is a metric that can change year to year, especially in a potting mix. Small, fine particles are very good at holding water for long periods of time...which means less watering for you, but also translates to wetter roots for the seedlings/transplants. Ideally your potting mix consists of both fine and large particle sizes, facilitating the sweet spot between drainage and water holding capacity
- the weight of a tray or pot is a great indicator of whether or not something needs more water. Dry potting mix is very very light...so if your pot or try is heavy, you may not need to apply more water, despite a lighter colour on the surface of the growing media in the tray
- make sure your young plants are setup so that water can drain freely. For trays, thats getting them up and off the ground, even just a few centimeters. For plants in the soil, make sure that the drainage in the greenhouse is adequate! Planting a horticulture crop in soggy, wet, low-lying areas is likely going to result in an unhappy plant and low yield if it gets that far along
-Cutworm
Photo pulled from OMAFA IPM Training Workshop.
Cutworm is most destructive when they attack seedlings in the early spring. The larvae feed at night, and one individual larvae can kill several plants. These are most actively found in and around borders/weedy areas, but keep an eye out throughout the tunnel. If you gently dig around the base of wilted or fallen plants, this is likely where you will uncover the larva.
-Wireworm damage
Photo of wireworm life stages pulled from Utah State Extension Website
Wireworm can be a bit trickier to spot - look for random patterns of collapsed plants, like in the lettuce here. There are obvious differences in plant performance between and across the rows, so that is a good indicator that we are dealing with a biotic (insect, disease, nematode) pest versus an abiotic one (weather, nutrition). We moved the soil around the base of one of the collapsed plants, pulled out a good chunk of the root ball and identified the culprit - wireworm! This lettuce photo was taken this year about a month ago, so they have been active for a few weeks now in protected spaces.
-Leek moth
Photo pulled from the Identification and Management Guide produced by Cornell.
Leek moth flight/emergence is temperature dependent. Once the temperatures reach 10C, adults will start emerging from their overwintering sites. They don't waste any time, and start mating within 24 hours of that, promptly laying eggs on leaf surfaces of host plants. A week after that, the eggs will hatch, and the larvae will mine/bore into plant tissue.
Cornell has a comprehensive document looking at photos of damage in various crops, lookalike issues, and information on their life cycle - Check It Out Here!
Reports out of New York show that leek moth was caught in action in New York last week, with more trickling through this week. If you don't have your netting up yet, it should be your top priority! Protecting against that first flight will significantly improve the quality and longevity of your crop
-Springtails
Springtails are a bit more under the radar when it comes to spring pests...but after a report of some damage caused by these buddies earlier this year, I figured they earned their spot on this list. They have been occasionally reported feeding on beans, beets, broccoli, potato, radish, cucumber and greens across the northeast.
This tiny insects typically feed on decaying plant material and for the most part are seen as beneficial insects. In some instances, however, they will feed on and cause significant injury to young plants. The damage and appearance of these guys looks very similar to flea beetles. They spring away when a plant is disturbed, and are most problematic to young plants in the spring. The main differences from afar are going to be those host crops, as well as the size - springtails are about half the size of a flea beetle.
Eggs are laid in moist soil with high organic matter....so if you do see them out and about in your greenhouse, anticipate that they will likely crop up again next year. These can be controlled using insecticides, as well as a combination of beneficial insects.
____________________________________________________________
This is by no means the only uninvited guests we should be looking out for. If you have any questions or concerns regarding pests, diseases, or plant production in general, don't hesitate to reach out!
Recent Uploads:
That's all for now! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out :)
Happy growing everyone!
Talia (tplaskett@perennia.ca)
