Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/61297
® The standard by which all others are measured "My Brother Bill and I farm 300 acres of blueberries here in WIND MACHINES— These machines really work Michigan. We have solid-set irrigation and use water to frost protect, we have four Orchard Rite® Wind Machines to protect Researchers used a grape hoe to build a berm covering the dwarfing rootstock and protecting it from dogwood borer infestation. They also noticed a boost in tree vigor. BENEFITS of mounding • Facilitates surface drainage of water away from tree and avoidance of crown rot. • Allows shallow planting, which avoids potential of scion rooting, but exposes rootstock shank to air, encouraging burr knots on dwarfing clonal rootstocks. Burr knots deform the trunk and attract dogwood borers and woolly apple aphids. • When covered, root primordia in burr knots extend into soil, reducing the burr knot's attrac- tiveness to dogwood borer. Mounding is the least costly and most sustainable approach to avoid- ing dogwood borer. • Mounding can protect and insulate the rootstock- union/shank in first winter. • Extension of adventitious root initials can enhance canopy vigor. branches and trunks. These bark-covered roots do not express phytotoxic symptoms when herbicide treatments are directly applied, Perry said. Trees in orchards where scion roots have been gener- ated will show excessive vigor after six or seven years, and this problem can't be rectified, he said. Dwarfing effect The higher the bud union is above the ground, the more dwarfing effect there is on the tree. "Europeans have used this knowledge for years in ultra-high density plant- ings to keep trees weak by planting so that unions are as high as 12 inches above soil," Perry said. His "rule of thumb" suggests that, for the M.9 root- stock, every inch the graft union is above the ground translates to 6 to 12 inches reduction in tree height. In using the practice of mounding to avoid problems with dogwood borer, he has noted that those trees that generated roots on the rootstock shanks have improved vigor. In the case of weak-growing Honeycrisp on dwarfing rootstocks, this could be an additional benefit beyond avoidance of dogwood borers, he said. "That's already quite a benefit when considering that forming the mound is only done once at planting time rather than treating the insects each year as they attempt to infest during those first seven years when trees are vulnerable to attack." • www.goodfruit.com where we can't get water (pumping 3,000 gallons of water per minute, we just don't have enough water to cover the farm). We'll often have temperatures around 26 to 28 degrees. With our wind machines, we can gain 3 to 5 degrees. The auto start option has been our sav- ior on cold nights. It just gives me 4 less things to do. I wouldn't buy anoth- er one without autostart. We have nine more Wind Orchard Rite® Machines in partnership operations in Washington and Oregon. I can tell you these machines really work: They've saved a lot of fruit." George and Bill Fritz My Orchard-Rites® Brookside Farms; Gobles, Michigan paid for themselves For nearly two decades, I have been farming vinifera grapes in the Grand River Val- ley of Ohio. Starting with a 2- acre leased field, my family now owns 85 acres and man- ages another 80 acres for three wineries. Today hun- dreds of wind machines dot the east coast fruit region, but back in 1995 when we installed our first machine, nobody was running them. Today we use five machines to move cold air winter and spring in frost/winterkill areas. The original propane machine now has 500 hours and still starts on the first or second crank at sub- zero temperatures. The most commonly asked question about our Orchard Rites® are: 1). Do they work? & 2). How much do they raise the winter low temperature? In our best site, currently protected by one 165hp. unit, the machine protects up to 15 at-risk acres and raises temper- ature 8-12° F. on the coldest January nights when started early. On poorer sites, less temperature increase is to be expected (3-4° F.), although the machines clearly lessen the time that the vineyard spends at the nights lowest temperatures. On a 10 acre site, with wine grapes at $1,500/ton, avoiding a one-time 1.6 tpa loss will cover the initial investment. On any one of the coldest nights between 2003-2005, each Orchard Rite® paid for itself." Gene Seigel South River Vineyard, Grand River Valley, Ohio Let us help you solve your unique frost control needs. 1615 W. Ahtanum • Yakima, WA 98903 • 509-248-8785, ext. 612 For the representative nearest you, visit our website: www.orchard-rite.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER APRIL 15, 2012 19 photo by RoN pERRy