See what one Florida citrus growers has to say about citrus greening management strategies.

 

Citrus greening, also known as HLB, has every citrus grower looking for the best citrus greening management strategies. A Citrus Industry article picked the brain of Florida citrus grower and vice president of grove operations at Southern Gardens Citrus, Jim Snively, recently. See a few of his words below.

A Few Words on Citrus Greening Management Strategies

 

Snively brought up these strategies at the March International Citrus Business Conference.

Tree Nutrition: “By reducing stress, the trees can deal with disease much better. We’re doing this through continuous-type feeding or frequent feeding with the liquid fertilizer through our irrigation system.” According to the article, he mentioned that some groves are using frequent dry fertilizer applications or slow-release fertilizer to continuously deliver nutrients.

Psyllid Control: “When we plant a new grove today, we immediately get into our application of neonics (neonicotinoid insecticides). We do it every six weeks. We try to have that first application within 24 to 48 hours after planting. And we do that every six weeks for the first two years.”

Psyllid Resistance: “In mature groves and where we may have resets, we will do the neonic applications on resets. But as far as spray applications, they get the same treatment that the mature trees get, which is, we spray once a month and rotate our chemistry to try to keep down the possibility of resistance.”

Griffin Fertilizer is committed to helping both growers and ranchers make sound agronomic and economic decisions in order to maximize the health of their grove and pasture. As a full-service custom dry & liquid fertilizer blender and crop protection product distributor, we will continue our mission to further advance Florida agriculture. For questions or concerns about your farm or pasture, contact us and one of our team will be in touch.