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What Do You Do When There Are No Cucumber Fruits On Your Plants? | |
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When I visited the greenhouse the plants appeared to be in good health although slightly vegetative. The inter-node length was reasonable. Heavy infestation of onion thrips was noticed. During July, onion thrips move into the greenhouse, but I never have seen them causing this kind of damage to the fruit/flower buds. I checked the fertilizer program and irrigation practices, which were o.k. The grower had started an aggressive biocontrol release program.
On my way back from this greenhouse I stopped by to talk to our famous Dr. Ken Fry at Olds College and mentioned this problem. He pointed out that onion thrips can attack very young buds of cucumbers, unlike western flower thrips. So that is what appeared to be the case.
I also noticed that old crop was still around in one half of the greenhouse. It was loaded with thrips and they just moved over to new crop. Good sanitation practices require that you get rid of old crop, clean the greenhouse thoroughly and then plant new seedlings. Obviously the grower did not do that in this case. Significant yield loss could occur in this case. Paying attention to these details is essential to maintaining sustainability of your business.
The contents of this page are no longer available.
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For more information about the content of this document, contact Shelley Barkley.
This information published to the web on August 5, 2008.
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