Thanks for the heads-up. Let's hope it's not too bad...

I'm hoping that this winter will help to kill the little nasty's off. I had them in my my late raspberries last summer, I cut all the fruits off, bagged and burned them.

Also thanks for the heads up.

Ugh, I hope we can find a good way to prevent there damage.

I too hope that something related to our Minnesota climate will aid in mitigating this problem. I admit I have my doubts, though.

I have been food gardening for around 40 years now. I am finding the gardening experience to be more and more disheartening as the years go by, with all the new bugs, soil issues, and diseases that are occurring or are being introduced. I feel as if a war is being waged against us gardeners and we are slowly, inexorably losing ground. I know my grandparents never had to deal with most of the gardening issues that we are dealing with today. My parents just started to see some of these new problems (such as rampant tomato blight) towards the end of their gardening careers. I know for a fact that there are more problems now than when I started gardening.

From everything I have read and heard, I do believe that my grandparents' era (1920s to the 1960s) was the golden age of food gardening and it has been in decline ever since.

I will not give up, though. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, so to speak. Anyways, I have nothing else that interests me to the extent that gardening continues to do. Ain't gonna quit, eat grocery store food, and sit and watch television the rest of my life. ;)

Good luck all,
-Tom

Well I guess its spray more poisons on the plants?lol .Sometimes its hard to have a good crop when you have to battle weather and bugs and who knows what else gets on them. We have enough invasive crap in our water with the stupid flying carp trying to get up the mississippi river and if that happens watch what happens to the economy when no ones on the water with there toys.

Just an update on SWD in my area. I managed to get 10 days of raspberry picking in before SWD started showing up in the berries. I let someone else come in and pick 1 day. They were not gardeners and couldn't seem to grasp the need to pick ALL of the ripe berries no matter that I stressed that point several times. Within 3 days I gave up, cut the canes out, doused them with gas and burned them. Sigh! We'll see how next year goes before I decide whether the raspberries stay or go. Though I know they also infest grapes, so far I have found only a few grapes with them but I've been picking religiously. Any grapes I find with SWD get picked off and bagged and sealed and laid out to cook in the sun. ( As far as letting others in to pick, well I discovered I'm far to anal about my plants to ever run a "pick your own" place.)