Citrus growers impacted by Hurricane Helene now must decide the best management strategy to protect trees from potential disease issues prior to harvest.
Kim Jones, a citrus grower and packer with operations in Monticello, Florida, and Tifton, Georgia, weighed in on what to consider to protect trees.
Photo courtesy of Kim Jones
“Fungus is the biggest risk at this point,” said Jones. “The sunshine is really nice behind that storm because we had 5 or 6 inches of rain. That creates an environment for fungus to thrive. We’ll be putting fungicides out and all the way through the season because of the additional rain we got.
“The next step of that, when you put out a copper fungicide, you’ll wind up with a heavy mite problem two weeks later. For fresh fruit, you just can’t have rust mite fruit. You’ve got to have it clean of that. That’s a double-edged sword of putting out a copper fungicide. You can put out some other fungicides, and that’s what we’ll do. But copper is one of the most commonly used, and that’s the problem you get with copper.”
Learn more on mite management here.
Jones estimates that he had about 10% damage to his trees when Hurricane Helene moved through the region on Sept. 26 and 27.
“We’ve got broken limbs and trees that are pulled down because of the weight of the water and the fruit that was on there,” he said. “We’ve got a heavy crop load. It stretched the limbs down to the ground, so we’ll lose some fruit on the ground because of that. I don’t think we’ve got a lot of damage other than that. Those broken limbs, we’ll have to take those off next week and get them out of the way.”
By Clint Thompson