Twilight meeting 2013

This week, Pine Island Cranberry was glad to host the annual Cranberry Growers Twilight Meeting, run by Ray Samulis, the Burlington County agent for the Rutgers University Agricultural Extension Service. In contrast to the American Cranberry Grower Association’s Winter Meeting, the focus here is less research-oriented and uses a more hands-on approach to addressing timely topics of importance to cranberry growers. Included on the agenda were such topics as troubleshooting cranberry disease problems, identifying and controlling cranberry insects, and some hands-on discussion about bees, as well as a quick tour to a bog being studied by researchers at the Rutgers research station.

The discussion that had the most impact on Pine Island team members in attendance was Peter Oudemans’ presentation on new treatments for fairy ring, a disease which remains very difficult to control. Recent research has shown, however, that this time of year is the point where briars are starting to show symptoms of the rust that hosts the fairy ring disease. Rust is not yet carrying the fungus (which is the causal agent) but will become infected. If growers wait until August, the spores on the infected leaves will drop in the bog and could cause fairy ring to appear. So, according to Peter, spring is the optimum time to come out and clip briars. As Peter said: If we kill the top of the plant, the leaves will die, the fungus will die, and there won’t be a host for the fairy ring fungus to infect. It’s more expensive to treat than it is to prevent.”

Peter also brought a new tool: a thermal infrared camera which will be an enormous asset in reviewing heat stress, helping to optimize cooling in problematic beds. Pine Island team member Matt Giberson is especially interested to see how it can help with both scald and frost protection.

Next up was Cesar Rodriguez-Saona, with a brief talk on Integrated Pest Management. He gave everyone a rundown on sweeping and showed some samples of common cranberry pests, as well as a demonstration of traps and trap placement. The hands-on demonstration was particularly helpful for some of our newer team members in attendance. Kylie Naylor liked seeing them up close: “It’s one thing seeing them in a sweep net, but it’s really helpful to see them up close, especially at varying sizes.” She was also interested in the traps; having only used one type when she was scouting blueberries in her past work experience.

Also of tremendous interest was the talk by local beekeeper Dave Frank. Dave does this as a sideline hobby but is tremendously knowledgeable and even brought along some frames to pass around for everyone to get a closer look. He gave everyone in attendance a truly in-depth look at the average life-cycle of the honeybee and the important relationship between cranberry bogs and bee colonies. It was a very positive, informational presentation that was appreciated for its up-close look at something growers don’t always get to see.

Several members of our team were in attendance and found the discussion very useful. PIICM manager Cristina Tassone was particularly interested in the latest findings on fairy ring: “There’s no magic bullet and it will require some changes to our weed control program, but it’s a new approach that might get us further than direct treatment and definitely worth trying,” she says. She was also highly intrigued by the canopy experiments to keep young bogs cool by misting instead of full-on irrigation.

Mostly, though, as with the winter meeting, everyone really enjoyed the opportunity to meet with other growers. “It’s great having all the growers and key researchers together in one place to have a discussion,” Bill says. “You can get as much from just having a conversation over dinner as you can from the presentation. I got a lot out of the talk in the bog; it started out as a discussion about rust and fairy ring but then evolved into a discussion about red maple, which has been very much on our minds. It’s always been an issue, dealing with it has always been labor intensive, but talking with both the researchers and other growers gave us some ideas on how to improve our program.” Cristina agrees: “Bill and I had a really great talk with [local growers] Bill and Shawn Cutts about their new swan string reel. It’s that kind of opportunity that really makes the twilight meeting productive.”

“When the growers, researchers, and vendors all come together, we can come up with great ideas to apply to specific issues,” Bill says. “It helps us improve our process, it helps us improve our crop…it helps us become better growers.”