Strawberries and Caneberries

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Not my picture, but very much what I saw with our light microscope. Irregular shaped spores, some lemon shapes mixed in and walled and branched mycelium with some color to it.
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Cladosporium on Raspberry

July 11, 2020
By Mark P Bolda
I got called out a few weeks by the farm manager and the PCA of a raspberry field suffering from a darkish mold growing on the fruit.
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False chinch bugs aggregating on strawberry fruit. Photo courtesy Amber Schat.
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False Chinch Bugs on the Move

June 3, 2020
By Mark P Bolda
I've had some calls the last few days concerning really large concentrations of bugs showing up in strawberries.
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Virtual Farm Call: You Be the Judge

May 29, 2020
By Mark P Bolda
Had the fruit pictured below show up in one of my pick plots, and figured I'd put this one out to the readers on some opinions on what this could be. The brown lesions on the fruit are hard, but not sunken like one would see with anthracnose.
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Larva of the convergent ladybird beetle.
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Hello There My Little Friend

May 5, 2020
By Mark P Bolda
Just picking one of my strawberry trials this morning (yes, yes, I pick by myself, usually the nearest person is like a quarter of a mile away - it's pretty therapeutic actually) and I happened across this little guy wandering about on top of the bed plastic.
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Figure 1: Temperatures from 8-29 to 9-6.. Note that measurement of temperature began at approximately noon on August 29, 2019 and peaks are realized around 2 pm every day, temperatures measured in degrees Celsius.
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Initial Investigation to Reduce Reversion in Blackberries

April 25, 2020
By Mark P Bolda
Rationale: Reversion, meaning the reddening of part or all of a blackberry fruit after harvest, has become a major problem for blackberry growers across the United States who can lose up to 25% of their total crop to this phenomenon.
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