Summertime in Georgia

Mandarin IPM field training: my translator, Izolda;
Mamuka, and one of our University trainers

I'm back in the Republic of Georgia again, for mandarin training. This time I'm doing IPM (Integrated Pest Management) training for our university trainers and area farmers in Adjara province, mostly in or near Batumi.

Batumi is a resort town in summer, as it's on the Black Sea. Practically everyone you see on the street is in a bathing suit or carrying a brightly colored plastic float, wading pool or whatever. Of course, my hotel is right next to the promenade park which lies between the city and the sea. Here is a charming statue at the entrance to the promenade in front of my hotel. This was a resort in the 18th and 19th century, and I think this harkens back to then.

I'm not sure I would come here on vacation, as it's very hot and humid...a lot of days have been in the upper 90's, but with 90% relative humidity. You just move and you sweat. I guess sitting close to the sea and jumping in frequently is okay, but for working in the orchard, not so much.


Georgian mountain countryside

The countryside is beautiful, though. Very green, as it rains quite a lot. In the 6 days I have been in Batumi, I think it has rained 5. Fortunately it has mostly been in late afternoon or at night, as they are almost always thunderstorms - with plenty of thunder and lightning. I'm on the 9th floor of the hotel, and there are about 15 floors above me, so I don't worry much. It's interesting, though.

There are lots of fruits and vegetables in little farmstands all along the roads and everywhere in town. Pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, as well as green hazelnuts, plus apples (with lots of scab).

Everywhere there are tons of watermelons including enormous light and dark green striped ones, plus smaller ones. I've heard that it was a bumper crop this year, where they are grown in Eastern Georgia. They taste great...I have had diced watermelon every morning for breakfast.



They also have big canteloupes and enormous Persian-type or Egyptian shimmam melons - light or white flesh,and very sweet.  There are also enormous  pink heirloom tomatoes that look like some of the Russian ones we grow.



Good time to eat your fruits and vegetables! I have had some great salads, including ones with Armenian cucumbers, luscious ripe red tomatoes with dill and parsley...yum!!! And I eat cucumbers and Greek-type olives for breakfast most mornings as well...a very Mediterranean habit!

In the fruit stand picture, the hanging things in the back are hazelnuts in a fruit casing. They prepare a syrup of grape or other juice that is then wrapped around the nuts and dried like fruit leather. It's pretty tasty, but quite sweet. These are green hazelnuts...something I had not seen before.They eat them raw, not dried or roasted at this time of year.

It is, as always, fascinating to see the differences in how things are grown, presented, and eaten. It's all part of the adventure. There are lots of grapes ripening this time of year, in everyone's yard in rural areas. They use them both for wine and for eating.  Below is a very common sight - a grape on an arbor above the driveway.  They have lots of shotberries - a problem with uneven ripening, but they do make some very fine wines.  I've had a number, both red and white. All have with really interesting, but hardly pronounceable Georgian names: Mtsvane, Rkatseteli, Saperavi.

I just learned the other day that there can be up to 10 consonants in a row in Georgian! No wonder I cannot pronounce some of these things they think are so simple! I am still working on learning one Georgian word a day...this time I have learned the word for spider - uboba, lady beetle, white flies and such things because that's what we talk about all day in the training. If you hear it often enough, you can repeat it...sort of.  I still cannot pronounce the Georgian version of malodyetz - a Russian word meaning good job or good student. So I use the Russian - they all think it's really funny.

As for the training, because I am not fond of the heat, I suggested that we start training early in the morning. So Mamuka, my Georgian colleague, moved the start time from 11 AM to 10 AM! When I told him I was thinking more like 7 AM, his eyes got really big and he said that no one would come then! Georgians are real night owls...there is a ton of traffic at 2 or 3 AM on the streets, but no one moving at 7 or 7:30 AM. I should know, for the first four nights I was here, I was on the side of the hotel next to the night club. I heard it all night from 7 PM to 4 AM...I know, because I would wake up when the bass was particularly loud. I finally got my room changed yesterday, and now it's fine. Just background noise.

So we did three and a half days of training of trainers on pest management. You Mountain Mandarin Growers should feel really grateful that you are not trying to grow here! They have two really nasty things that we don't, plus a whole assortment of scale insects that are a problem because they nuke the orchards with really heavy pesticides. IPM is an entirely new concept!
They have citrus scab, a fungus disease, plus Citrus rust/or silver mite. Both damage fruit really badly if they are not managed. Unfortunately they have overused many pesticides, so the mites, scale and fungus, especially, are resistant to them.  I set up a recommended program for them last spring, and some orchards were properly sprayed, but not all. But, the trainers say the orchards look so much better now that they did last year that I am quite the hero(ine). One of the farmers at the first farmer training today told me that he had pruned his trees as we recommended, and he has the biggest fruit he's ever had! He pointed to oranges in a tree, and said that his mandarins were that big...for here, enormous. He was so happy!


Citrus scab on mandarin fruit and leaf.
It looks like pimples on the leaves.

Here are some lovely mandarins which did not get sprayed on time this spring...they have horrible scab, and once it's on there, there is nothing you can do about it. So I'm telling them now to just get them out of the orchard...they don't ever ripen properly. This orchard actually has very little scab, compared to some of them. One apparently has almost 70% according to the trainers...I'm not sure how that can be better than last year, but that's what they tell me!

This is something really cool that I've never seen before. The orchard we have been working in this week actually has quite a few natural enemies...i.e. organisms that prey on pests. This is a fungus that attacks white fly pupae. Each of the white things is a juvenile whitefly. The ones with the orange have been attacked...the orange is the spores it puts out, and one spore falls on the whitefly juvenile, germinates, and kills the whitefly. Nature is so cool sometimes!

More on what we are doing with farmer training next time. The first one was today, and I'll be going to different ones each day this week.
Nakhvamdis (KnockH-vum-diss), Goodbye in Georgian, for now.

Cindy