Welcome to the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System=s Vegetable Pest Message. 
This message is being recorded on Friday afternoon June 19 by Jude Boucher. 

This week's message will cover:

• European corn borer infestation just starting

• Preventing crow damage to young sweet corn

• Reducing your fertilizer bill

• Basil downy mildew

• Fungicide shortage and Expanded Bravo label

• Ordering insect traps and pheromones.

European corn borer infestations just starting
Early plastic and row cover corn fields are beginning to tassel and silk in the warmer sections of the valley.  If you are growing corn for the retail market you should be using at least row-covers to push your first planting or two forward so that you can bring in the customers on the 4^th of July or within a week or so after the 4th. 

We captured 3 ECB moths in Berlin and 4 in Shelton this week. This almost matches the counts we got for the second week in June last year. We expect more moth pressure next week.  Eggs are being laid on the lower six leaves of young whorl stage corn plants right now and some are beginning to hatch. We found infestations of just 2% of the plants in whorl stage corn fields in Shelton and Glastonbury this week. Whorl and pretassel stage sweet corn should be scouted for corn borer larvae for the next 3 to 4 weeks to determine the population level within each planting.  You should scout 50 plants per block in groups of 10 plants.  Choose the starting place at random, and then scout 10 plants in a row, before moving to the second spot.  Do not look for plants with holes in them to start your scouting or you will bias your estimate up, so that it reads artificially high.  Most fields should be cleaned up by spraying during pretassel if 15% of the plants are infested. 

Preventing crow damage to young sweet corn
Yesterday afternoon, as I was finishing planting sweet corn and squash at the research farm, I noticed that the crows were in the field even before I had finished planting.  I have also had a couple of people ask me how to control crows on their seedling corn this spring, so I=ll remind you about a simple remedy used by an East Hartford grower that I told you about last year.  After planting or during the spike stage, this growers sets out a line of tomato stakes, spaced at about 25-50 yards apart, and strings fishing line from the stakes down the length of his planting. It is not a straight line but rather zig-zags across the planting as it moves down the length of the block.  He claims the line discourages the birds from landing and have completely eliminated the problem he used to have with the crows pulling up the young plants to get at the attached seed.  It takes very few stakes to use this method even in a very long block of corn.  When the plant gets to 6" or so, he simply moves the row of stakes, over to the next block of emerging corn, so that the most vulnerable seedling stage is always protected. If crows are a problem on your farm, give it a try, you might find it saves you a lot of money. 

Reducing your fertilizer bill
A couple of the growers who are planting several acres of raised-, plastic-covered beds for solanaceous and cucurbit crops have ordered fertilizer attachments for their bed-makers that meter the fertilizer across the top of the bed just before the plastic is put down.  By fertilizing just the beds and not the alley-ways and row-middles, these growers are able to reduce their fertilizer bills by over half on this acreage. They tell me they are getting these fertilizer attachments, which includes the bins, meters, tubes and spreader head from Rain-Flo down in PA. They tell me the sales reps are very helpful when they call and knowledgeable about what you need to retrofit your bed-maker with a fertilizer spreader.  Rain-Flo doesn't seem to have a web site, so if you are interested in ordering a catalog you can call 1-717-445-3000.

If you want to reduce your nitrogen bill even further think about taking nitrogen credits for the organic matter in your soil or the crop residues that you have incorporated, or produce some nitrogen by planting vegetables after a legume cover crop.  For instance, a well managed soil will convert 1-4% of the organic matter into usable nitrogen each year or about 20-40 lbs of N per acre for each percent OM.  So you can safely take 20 lbs of N credits for each percent OM.. You can also take 30 pounds of N credits if you are incorporating sweet corn stalks into your soil each year, or up to 100 pounds of N credits if you are following an alfalfa crop or a mixed cover crop of winter rye and hairy vetch that is allowed to grow through May.  

Basil downy mildew
Meg MeGrath, the pathologist at Cornell=s Long Island Research Lab has passed on an alert that downy mildew has been reported on some of the basil sold by some of the big box stores in the Northeast this spring. The major symptom is leaf yellowing that is similar to N deficiency.  Sporulation occurs on the lower leaf surface.  This is a new disease of the basil, mint and sage family that first entered the country in 2007 and was found throughout the East Coast in 2008. Pathologists expect this disease to become an annual problem on basil here in the States as it is in other areas where it occurs.  It is a different species of fungus from the downy mildew that infects cucurbit or other crops.  It can be present in the seed, or spread on transplants, or long distances on the wind.  Genovese basil is reported to be highly susceptible while the variety Nufar is a little more tolerant, however, Nufar is a Japanese beetle magnet and can even be used as a trap crop for this insect. Meg reports that the phosphoric acid fungicide, ProPhyt is registered for downy mildew on herbs, as is Actinovate Ag, which is an OMRI  listed fungicide and an option for organic growers.  Amistar is also labeled for basil and should work on downy mildew.  As with other downy mildew species, prolonged periods of wet weather and leaf wetness favor the development and spread of the species.  So anything that reduces leaf wetness time, such as increasing plant spacing or planting on hills with good air circulation, can help manage this problem.    

Fungicide shortage and Expanded Bravo label