Infection period Saturday April 23rd thru April 24th

WALDO, KNOX, LINCOLN, Southern HANCOCK
Mummy berry infection periods have occurred in most areas of Lincoln, Knox and southern Waldo county. An infection period also may have occurred in southern Hancock county.
Cups were found on Monday in Union, Liberty and Belfast. Cups had developed over the weekend in Belfast, which tends to be a week later than fields in Union for plant development. If you have a warmer, earlier field in those area, you probably did have some cups for the infection period on Saturday. If you have a cooler, later field you may have avoided the infection period. On Monday April 25th, 70% of the stems in Belfast had susceptible buds up from 30% last Thursday. Most areas that are south of Belfast will have enough susceptible stems to need protection.

The infection period in these areas started on Saturday April 23rd from approximately 10am to noon depending upon the field and ended on Sunday, April 24th from 6am to 8am, again depending upon the field.
If you have applied fungicide between April 16th and April 22nd then your plants would have been protected for the infection period on Sat. April 23rd.
If you have NOT applied fungicide, then you have until approximately Tuesday April 26th at noon to protect your plants.

The wet, warm weather forecast for much of the state in the next 4 days will provide more opportunities for infection periods to occur.

Please follow all recommendations in the Disease Control Guide for 2011, Bulletin 219.

DOWNEAST
Mummy berries are still only at the pin head stage and are not producing spores yet. Plants do not yet have enough open flower and leaf buds to have susceptible tissue to be infected. I predict cups will start to open this week with the warm, wet weather. Cups do open before the plants have enough susceptible tissue. Please check your field for how far along your plants are in development (see below). If 40% of the stems have susceptible flower buds than you have enough exposed tissue to make an application of fungicide effective.

Checking the development of your plants
To find the percentage of stems with flower buds at the F2 stage (seen to your right). Walk across your field and randomly collect 20 stems. If 8 out of 20 stems have flower buds at F2 stage than your plants are far enough along to become infected. Flower and leaf bud development follow each other closely and flower buds are much easier to determine when they are susceptible.

If you have a mummy berry patch I would like to hear how it is progressing, particularly if you are in Hancock county as I have no sites in that area.