Mummy berry report for May 2nd to May 6th 2024
The rain caused conditions for Monilinia infection in most fields with weather stations from May 2 to the morning of May 6th. Depending upon the field, there were one to four infection periods in this stretch of days. If you applied fungicides on or after 7 to 10 days before these infection periods (April 22 to April 25), your plants were probably protected during these last infection periods.
There are still cups being produced in the Midcoast and Downeast fields. In some fields the mummy berry cups in our mummy berry plots have started to dry up, but I expect for most fields the cups will still be present through this week. The forecast is for fog on the night of May 6th which may produce Monilinia infection conditions in fields close to the coast. The forecast is for more rain from Wednesday May 8th to Saturday May 11th and I expect this will cause more infection periods this week. Hopefully the cups will be finishing up by the end of this week.
If you have applied fungicides before April 27, your plants may not be protected over this next period of rain from Wednesday to Saturday this week. You may want to consider applying fungicide to protect your plants. Please avoid applying fungicides when bees are in the field.