Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/459886
FEBRUARY 15, 2015 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com TECH-FLO ® ZETA ZINC 22 ASK YOUR P.C.A. OR CALL NUTRIENT TECHNOLOGIES TOLL-FREE: 877/832-4356 FOR THE DEALER NEAREST YOU. Just because you put a foliar zinc on doesn't mean the job's done. Some zinc products are so ineffective they are better suited as sun- screens or paint. In trial after trial, TECH- FLO ® ZETA ZINC 22 (22% Zinc) has been shown to be the most effective foliar zinc product on the market today, getting the zinc into the tree where it is needed. For the best value for your nutritional dollar, choose TECH-FLO ® ZETA ZINC 22. UNSURPASSED FOLIAR ZINC PERFORMANCE! …PUTTING ZINC ON PUTTING ZINC IN… PUTTING ZINC IN… Fred Valentine has always had growers' interests at heart. by Geraldine Warner O ver the course of a six-decade career span- ning research assistant, fieldman, horti- culturist, and grower, Fred Valentine has accumulated—and dispensed—a wealth of information. Valentine was never shy about speaking his mind if he thought it would help Washington's tree fruit growers. "Fred's always been a vocal advocate to bring issues to the table to get them resolved," said Tom Auvil, research horticulturist with the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission. Valentine could be blunt. Auvil recalls that during the late 1980s Valentine made his point about the need to enforce condition standards, and keep soft apples out of the marketplace, by pushing the handle of a knife through one of the offending apples. "Those kinds of things have to be kept in the forefront of the industry, and it takes a lot of guts to speak up," Auvil said. "One thing about Fred is he calls a spade a spade," said Pete Van Well Sr. at Van Well Nursery, where Valentine worked until his recent retirement. "If he was talking to a grower and he didn't like the way he was doing some- thing, he would tell them, and the grower liked that. I don't think I ever met anybody who didn't like Fred." Bob Gix, who worked for many years with Valentine as a horticulturist at Blue Star Growers, said Valentine always had the interests of the growers in mind. When growers were upset with food safety regula- tions, Fred was upset about food safety, Gix recalled. When growers thought the market was oversupplied, he tried to come up with a way to divert the lower grades and sizes. Good listener Though known for his outspokenness, Valentine is an incredibly good listener, said Cashmere orchardist Randy Smith, who regards him as a mentor. There were many times when Valentine would sit at the coffee shop listening to people bouncing all kinds of questions and ideas around. They would ask his opin- ion, but he let them keep talking until they came up with their own answers. "He really liked to pull the most out of people," Smith said. Besides being knowledgeable about all the details of growing fruit, Valentine never lost sight of the big picture, Smith said. "While he was looking at the insects, and the trees, and the problems of the here and now, he really had an uncanny ability to step back and look at the big picture at the same time, and I think that's not a trait that's common. "For many years, he was absolutely the go-to guy for anything to do with pears," Smith said. "He was Mr. Pear for so many years." Less well known is the encouragement Valentine gave to young people in the Wenatchee Valley that persuaded them to train as horticulturists and join the tree fruit industry, Smith said. "There was a large cadre of WSU-educated fieldmen who came out of Cashmere, and a huge part of that was the mentoring that Fred and others provided to give those guys a peek at how they could be of service to the industry in a way that they would never have imagined just growing up on the farm," Smith said. "He took a lot of young people under his wing." A vocal advocate