By Clint Thompson
South Carolina watermelon producers encountered their share of rainfall this production season. They had to overcome a plethora of diseases as a result.
Brittney King, Clemson commercial horticulture Extension agent in Florence, South Carolina, provided an overview of the watermelon season and the challenges it presented this year. Growers still achieved strong yields.
“Overall, it went pretty well this year. We did struggle with a lot of diseases, though. We got a lot more rain during harvest (season) and before harvests this year than we did last year, and we saw a lot of diseases,” King said. She also noted that, “We saw fusarium wilt in cantaloupes, then in watermelon we were seeing a lot of gummy stem blight and anthracnose. We still ended up with pretty good yields, otherwise.
“Overall, I feel like we did get more rain this summer than last summer, although there are some localized areas that are still pretty dry. Overall, we definitely did get a lot more rain.”
Maybe more than any other fruit and vegetable crop, watermelons can experience a wide range of disease buildup, especially during a rainy summer, That was certainly the case for South Carolina farmers this year.
“Diseases are a really big issue down here in the Southeast for watermelon. Most of our growers commercially are on a preventative spray program with fungicides,” King said. “Pretty much from the get-go, they’re spraying things preventatively, and then once diseases pop up, like downy mildew is the really big one we worry about.
“Typically, it starts more in the Coastal area like in Charleston and within a couple of weeks it will have spread up into the Pee Dee and throughout the rest of the state.”