Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/232761
Ray Fuller has welcomed countless visitors to his orchard at Chelan where they can admire cutting-edge horticulture and a view of the lake. Fuller is using a biaxis training system, which makes weed control easier than when trees are planted more densely. Tom Auvil, then field horticulturist for Trout, the Chelan cooperative where Fuller took his fruit, was a big help. "He looked at me sideways numerous times, but he was a very good resource," Fuller recalls. Auvil knew that Fuller was determined. "There was no dissuading him from going down that path," he told Good Fruit Grower. "He had done so much legwork in trying to figure out how to make things work and what the issues were." Larry Lundberg, then manager of Trout, was skeptical. "They liked the idea, but they knew it was going to be a challenge," Fuller said. It would be another decade before mating disruption became available to control codling moth, so Fuller spent much of his time spraying Ryania (a botanical pesticide made from the ground stems of a tropical plant) and the codling moth granulosis virus. Even though he used additives to make them more effective, he had to spray every other row on a four- or five-day schedule. "It was a lot of work," he said. "We sprayed a lot." Auvil said Fuller's organic block had old Starking Red Delicious trees with rough bark that made codling moth particularly difficult to target. "It got to the point where he was spending a fortune spraying, and it still had too much damage," he said. Fuller's response, characteristically, was not to give up on organic but to replant the block of trees. All or nothing After experimenting for two or three years, Fuller broke the news to Lundberg that it had to be all or nothing, because trying to be part organic and part conventional was turning into a nightmare. "The look on Larry's face was disbelief," Fuller recalled. "But they stepped up to the plate, so it worked." Initially, his farm was certified through Washington Tilth, though the standards were quite loose. He was among the first to be certified with the Washington State Department of Agriculture when it began its Organic Food Program in 1988. In the early 1990s, organic pest control suddenly got easier and more effective with the advent of mating disruption for codling moth for both organic and conventional use. Fuller had help from WSU entomologists Dr. Jay Brunner and Dr. Larry Gut who tested the technique in his orchard, in the first of many research trials he's hosted. Then, organic grower Harold Ostenson devised an effective organic fruit-thinning program using fish oil and lime sulfur, which addressed another challenge. Fuller said the differences between organic and conventional practices are much smaller than they used to be. Conventional growers have learned from organic, recognized that there are other ways of doing things, and seen that softer approaches can be beneficial for the orchard and the industry as a whole. But there are still distinctions. Conventional growers use many tools that don't qualify as organic, such as synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and certain pesticides. Fuller has only one option—Entrust (spinosad)—for controlling the spotted wing drosophila and worries that the new pest will develop resistance to the insecticide. 18 JANUARY 1, 2014 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com