By Clint Thompson
North Florida watermelon producers are close to being done harvesting this year’s crop. A small percentage remained this week, says Bob Hochmuth, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Regional Specialized Extension agent in Live Oak, Florida.
“We’re winding down, but there’s still a number of fields that are later planted. I’m going to say we’re probably 85% to 90% done. There are some farmers that are done entirely this week. We do hear stories about crews getting ready to move up to Georgia and other areas,” Hochmuth said. “(But) there is also a small percentage of these relatively younger fields that were planted in the Georgia calendar that have only been harvested once or twice that are still beautiful. We’re not done, done.”
For those growers still harvesting, they will have to navigate through multiple disease challenges that are widespread in the region. Hochmuth implores farmers that still have watermelons in the field to be diligent in managing downy mildew and powdery mildew until they see the last week of the harvest season.
“It goes downhill in a hurry. Powdery and downy mildew are the main concerns. We’re trying to see if we can figure out something about this particular strain (of powdery) that has changed or what’s going on. That’s one of my takeaways from this year would be, what’s going on with powdery mildew?” Hochmuth added. “The other one that is not new is what are we ever going to do about Fusarium wilt? Those would be the two things I’m concerned about (with this season).”