Registration Ongoing for Western Pecan Shortcourse

New Mexico State University is offering its Western Pecan Production Shortcourse, Oct. 17-19, at the Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces. Registration is underway and may be completed online. The registration fee is $350 for the two days of classroom instruction plus a full-day field trip to local pecan farms in Las Cruces....

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August is Pecan “D-Day”

The Texas pecan crop for 2016 will be made or lost in August. Our year started with a good, not great crop statewide. There were excessive spring rains and the trees looked great with the finest green foliage on record. There was enough rain and humidity for pecan scab to set in on most varieties....

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TPGA Tour Recap

In addition to pecan production, Swift River Pecan east of San Marcos, TX, processes huge trees and logs into lumber suitable for furniture and other uses. The Texas Pecan Growers conference attendees had the opportunity to tour the operation during the July annual meeting. Troy Swift has two large kilns and a number of large...

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Effective Pecan Weevil Management is Multi-Step Process

During the first week of August, I received two calls concerning the collection of adult pecan weevils — one from Kimble County in southwest Texas and one from northeast Texas along the Red River. These collections really did not surprise me and actually reinforces the data that pecan weevils can begin emergence during early August....

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Case 3: Crowd Control

Most scientists don’t get too personally attached to the plants they work on because sooner or later they will likely be cut down or otherwise destroyed. However, most other humans look at a full grown tree and think, “You want me to do what? Cut it down? Are you crazy?” What’s best is not always...

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Scab Resistance Update

Spring precipitation amounts in 2015 and 2016 have been truly impactful on agriculture in Texas, replenishing lakes and reservoirs, recharging deep soil strata with water and bringing discussions of historical droughts to at least a temporary halt. The 2016 pecan crop bears marks of these El Nino-influenced rains in many areas of Texas. The marks...

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Flory unveils environmentally friendly harvester

Flory Industries, headquartered in the heart of the California Central Valley, has just released the newest model of their self-propelled nut harvesters: the Flory 8700. The Flory 8700 combines a host of improvements over models released even a decade ago, from computerized in-cab controls to extra-thick safety glass windows. What sets the 8700 apart, however,...

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