When temperatures start heading into 3-digit territory, even the most sun-loving plants can start suffering from the effects of Georgia’s mid-summer sauna.

In spite of record-setting high temperatures at the end of the month, June was slightly cooler than normal in Georgia. Rainfall across the state varied greatly as Tropical Storm Debby dumped more than 10 inches on the southern half, but left north Georgia dry.

When it’s summertime in Georgia, hot and dry weather will cause stress to most plants. These conditions also help create another problem – spider mite damage.

Believe it or not, field peas — a fixture of the Southern dinner table — can be too difficult to grow in Georgia.

U.S. Forest Service entomologist Jim Hanula may be the only person in the South who actually wants to keep kudzu alive. He needs healthy plots of the famous weed to monitor the effect the bean plataspid – a pest that entered Georgia some two years ago and has become known as the kudzu bug – is having on kudzu.

Over the last three decades, the Trial Gardens at the University of Georgia have introduced home gardeners and landscape designers to thousands of new plant varieties.

University of Georgia researchers have determined that toxic algae killed four cows on a cattle farm in Gwinnett County. Georgia’s warm and dry spring created the perfect conditions for toxic algal blooms in ponds, they say, warning property owners to keep livestock and pets out of water that is discolored or opaque.

The World Food Prize Foundation awarded its Borlaug Medallion to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities today in Washington, D.C., during a ceremony celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Land-grant Act of 1862. Amb. Kenneth M. Quinn, president of the World Food Prize presented the award to Scott Angle, chairman of the APLU Board on Agriculture Assembly and Dean of the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Editorial: This week, the World Food Prize Foundation presented the Norman E. Borlaug Medallion to the U.S. Land-grant University System. Winning agriculture’s highest honor is welcomed validation for a century and a half of progress to educate working-class Americans and build the world’s most successful food production system. Where would America be without it?