Filtering by tag: Commercial Horticulture, Nursery & Turf ✕

Blueberry with orange-brown mold and split skin on stem and leaves

A Photo Guide to Blueberry Diseases in the Southeast

With blueberry season on the horizon, plant diseases unfortunately start to show their ugly faces. To help diagnose what disease might be affecting your plants, a handy photo guide to the common…

two blueberry fruits attached by the petiole showing rudged texture due to bud mite infestation

Blueberry Pests to Keep an Eye for in Early Spring

As the weather warms up, we see arthropod pests become active in blueberry fields. Blueberry bud mites are more active in late summer; however, their injury to leaf and flower buds is more evident…

Cluster of dark brown beetles crowded inside a white bowl

2025 Prionus Monitoring Report Available!

The 2025 Prionus Beetle Monitoring Program Report is now available. This extension publication presents comprehensive findings from a season-long monitoring effort that tracked adult and larval…

Cluster of ripening blueberries on a vine among green leaves

New Factsheet: Whiteflies in Blueberries

One of the post-harvest pests that can be found in North Carolina blueberries is bearberry whiteflies. Although it is rare to find populations large enough to justify insecticide applications in the…

cottony scale 2

New Factsheet: Scale Insects on Blueberry

As the blueberry summer season ends, most pruning has been conducted, and fall and winter preparations are underway; there have been questions related to management of scale insect pests in…

Cream-colored beetle grub nestled in a tunnel of decaying wood

It Is Time to Scout for Prionus Beetles in Blueberries!

This week, Prionus adults emerged from the soil near the blueberry plants in Pender and Sampson Counties. This is the first emergence of Prionus beetle adults recorded from blueberry fields in 2025.…

Cluster of dark brown beetles crowded inside a white bowl

The Root of the Problem: Prionus Longhorn Beetles in Blueberries

Prionus longhorn beetles, notably Prionuslaticollis, Prionusimbricornis, and Prionuscalifornicus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), pose significant challenges in agricultural and forestry management in the…

Blueberry twig defoliated by caterpillars

Yellownecked Caterpillars

Is your blueberry plant suddenly leafless? If you can still see stubs of leaf petioles attached to the bare twigs, chances are the damage was caused by yellownecked caterpillars (Datana sp.). On…

A cold storage facility.

SWD Investment Analysis Tool for Blueberry Cold Storage

Is a cold storage facility worth the cost, as an aid to managing spotted-wing drosophila? Recent work by D. Adeline Yeh (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service), Bingyan Dai, and…

White bracket fungus cluster growing on a vertical tree branch

Cottony Scale on Blueberry

Cottony Scale ( (Pulvinaria sp./spp.) has been observed again this Spring on several commercial blueberry farms in southeastern NC. The insect is very difficult to see in winter but becomes highly…