44 FEBRUARY 1, 2015 Good Fruit Grower www.goodfruit.com
Y
ou've heard it said that some people can't see
the forest for the trees.
Well, Rod Farrow believes the fruit growers'
challenge is often just the opposite.
It's hard to see the trees for the forest.
Farrow, who operates 480 acres of apple orchards in
Waterport, New York, truly has a forest to manage. It
contains 27 apple varieties mostly grown on the super
spindle system, with about 2,000 trees per acre, so
that's nearly a million trees. Who's got the time to pet
and fondle a million individual trees?
The key, he says, is uniformity. If all the trees are virtu-
ally the same, you can focus on a tree and multiply your
efforts by a million.
"It's all about having trees with the optimal fruiting
surface," he says. "Uniformity of the fruiting wood is key
to production of uniform, high-quality apples."
Farrow believes that, to maximize income and profit
from selling apples, each tree has to be coaxed to do all
the right things. Maybe its job is to produce 75 high-col-
ored 88-count Gala apples that pack 95 percent into the
Extra Fancy grade. If it does that, and so do all the other
Precise management
starts at TREE LEVEL
If you can do one
tree right, then you
can multiply that
by a million.
by Richard Lehnert
Horticulture
COURTESY TOM RIVERS/DAILY NEWS, BATAVIA, NEW YORK
Rod Farrow (left) credits his two new part-owners, Jose
Iniguez (center) and Jason Woodworth, for carrying out
the goals of precision orchard management. Their trees
are slender spindle and are being shaped into fruiting walls
using mechanical hedging.