By Clint Thompson
The University of Florida Food and Agricultural Sciences will host an on-farm watermelon field day on Tuesday, May 3 near Trenton, Florida.
Bob Hochmuth, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Regional Specialized Extension agent in Live Oak, Florida, discusses what growers and industry leaders can expect from the field day scheduled for the Watson Farm.
“The field day is going to be at one of our on-farm research sites where we look at different analysis of controlled release fertilizers. This will be the fourth year that we’ve been doing this on-farm and have very encouraging results from the previous years. It looks equally well this year,” Hochmuth said. “We feel like the controlled release fertilizer could be a good measure at least as a replacement for the bed fertilizer, if not for the entire season’s fertilizer. It appears that we can provide adequate nutrition to the watermelon field, and at the same time, reduce the risk of leeching, especially early in the season.
“We’ll also be talking about automating irrigation zones and also give an update on what we’re seeing in the field at that time of year in terms of disease and insect update, and other kinds of things that growers would be interested in this time of year.”
Attendees must register for the field day on Eventbrite by Friday, April 29.
