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Until now, Owens has worked with orchards established conventionally and converted to organic. Owens's apple orchards are on sloping land on mountainsides. A rainy early season last year made orchard floor grass control a challenge, but at the same time less necessary. and applesauces," he said. The value-added products are made from lower-value fruit. Owens grows about 125 acres of organic apples, but is diversified with some peaches and a wide variety of veg- etables. "Growing vegetables organically is a lot easier than growing apples organically, and my 25 acres of organic tomatoes saved me last year," he said. 125 acres of apples Owens has been able to sell all his fresh-grade apples during the harvest season, to Whole Foods, to regional supermarkets like Ingles and Earth Fare, and to local stores like the Hendersonville Food Co-op. So, he hasn't had to invest in storage. But he sure needs his sorting line. He estimates his packout of top-grade apples is only 25 to 30 percent—maybe 40 percent in a good year. The rest of the apples go for processing or for cider. Pickiness One thing that frustrates him is consumer pickiness over appearance. The biggest reason for sort-outs are the summer diseases—apple scab, sooty blotch, and flyspeck, which cause surface blemishes. "I wish consumers knew how easy it is wipe off sooty blotch and still have a perfectly fine apple," he said. "So far, they haven't been able to understand that." He hopes that, with two-tier pricing and signage in his new store, he can educate customers and bring more fruit into the fresh sales category. Bugs are not a big issue, he said. Using mating disrup- tion and approved organic insecticides, he has few prob- lems controlling codling moth and oriental fruit moth, but does need to focus on some secondary pests like green fruitworm. He rotates Dipel (Bacillus thuringiensis) and Entrust (spinosad) in his spray program. "We have several more insects and diseases to deal Most of Owens's orchards are surrounded by mature timber. On this mountain, he has three isolated orchards, each about a half mile apart. Luckily, infrastructure is good, as the landowner built good roads at his own expense. with here than they have in Washington," he said. Two years ago, he estimated his cost of production at $18 a bushel, compared with about $8 for conventional. "Our cost of production is going up, and the price pre- mium for organic fruit is coming down," he said. "Prices are almost the same for conventional and organic apples for processing or juice." Needs more sprays While many consumers view organic production as using chemicals less intensively or not at all, Owens figures he makes two or three times as many sprays as conventional growers do. Organic materials wash off more easily or have less residual activity, and are more often preventive than curative. "If I could use conventional fungicides, I could fix sooty blotch and flyspeck in a hurry," he said. "Sulfur is not very effective." When Owens decided to become an organic apple grower in 2000 (he was certified in 2003), he made some decisions that made the transition easier. He found land already in apples, leased the land, and then began the conversion. Only this last year did he face the challenge of growing organic apple trees from scratch. He planted 15 acres of Honeycrisp and another 10 acres to an early strain of Pink Lady, and wishes he had a better solution to weed control than tillage and mowing. His approach is to plant the trees on a more vigorous M.7 rootstock and a spacing of five feet in rows with 22- foot alleys. That makes it easy to mow and makes the trees more competitive with vegetation. Rainfall is high, so no irrigation is used at all. The orchards have grass floors, kept under control by mowing and workers using hand-operated line trimmers around the trees. His leased orchards are somewhat isolated from the main apple-production area in the county, most of them on mountainsides of 2,800 feet elevation or more. The isolation and elevation give him good color on the apples, some relief from the southern summer heat, and some distance from insects and diseases. He worries about what might happen with an outbreak of fireblight if organic growers lose access to antibiotics. • GOOD FRUIT GROWER MAY 1, 2012 25