Upcoming Events:
- Tunneltalk Webinar Series
- May 4 - Enterprise Budget for High Tunnel Tomatoes
- June 1 - Considerations for Protected Production
- June 15 - Virtual Office Hours
- July 6 - Virtual Office Hours
- July 20 - Virtual Office Hours
- August 10 - Virtual Office Hours
Production Tidbits: Monitoring Pollination
While tomatoes can self pollinate, there is a lot to be gained from supplementing bumblebees into tunnel houses, especially for early season tomatoes which flower well before natural pollinators are out and about. Tunnel hives increase the consistency, quality and size of the fruit on the truss. It can also impact your harvest time- rather than having slow, inconsistent fruit set that ripen at 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 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 our previous webinar sessions focused on pollination- Tunneltalk Webinar: Pollination
Seasonal Considerations: Order of Entry Around the Farm
Biosecurity protocols are going to be one of the best preventative tools we have to reduce disease and insect pressure inside our greenhouses. Whether your farm is big or small, there are a handful of practices that can be incorporated relatively easily on farm to try and make that path to entry a little bit harder for pests who were not invited to the party.
Here are a few considerations around order of entry to start the season off to the right foot:
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 at risk of transmitting field pests and pathogens 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. Whenever we can, 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 humidity and temperatures really help problems to thrive, and if they can find a way into our protected spaces, they will. All we are trying to do is make it a little bit harder for them to get into the greenhouse.
Pest and Disease: Transplant and Early Production Oddball
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.
