Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/560612
www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER SEPTEMBER 2015 15 Goldy said he first saw Honeycrisp trees on B.118 about six or eight years ago and liked the look of them, despite it being considered a semi-dwarfing root- stock. Biennial bearing can be a problem, but that's addressed by cluster thinning at tight cluster stage, he said. "That forces resting spurs into the system before bloom. That's helped predispose the tree to have 50 percent resting spurs before we start the season." Fuji Jamie Jamison, Stemilt's regional manager for Mattawa and Othello, said that in the first replanted Fuji block, the company was taken by surprise by how well the trees grew after the land had been row cropped. The ground was fumigated before the trees were planted. At planting, the side limbs were cut back to two buds. The limbs that grew ended up being four or five feet long and a half to three-quar- ters of an inch in diameter after the first season but with little branching. So, the following year, they were cut back again to two buds and grew into the kind of feathered branches Jamison wanted. "So we actually lost a year of pro- duction by growing the trees too hard," Jamison said, adding that in hindsight they would have applied less fertilizer. Recognizing the problem, when they planted another 40 acres of Fuji the fol- lowing year, they cut the fertilizer and ended up with much less blank wood and had a crop in the third year rather than the fourth. Asked if he would consider using a less vigorous rootstock, Jamison said he would not because his aim with Fuji is to fill the space by the second year and crop in the third year. "We just need to learn how to man- age the growth at the end of the second season," he said. Blind wood Jamison said they've tried a number of ways to overcome blind wood in Fuji trees, including delayed heading one to two weeks after bloom, scoring, and applications of the growth regulator MaxCel (6-benzyladenine) either with paint or as a spray. MaxCel has produced inconsistent results. Scoring, without MaxCel, has been more consistent. But Jamison said the best solution he's seen is to wrap, or braid, a one-year-old vertical side shoot around the blind area of the central leader, fastening the end with tape. This is wood that would otherwise be pruned off. Being of smaller caliper, the shoot will tend to throw dards and buds the year after treatment, which is done in the spring or summer. Jamison said the idea is not to graft the wood together, but simply to create new branches and fruiting surface in the area of the blind wood. • Good Fruit Grower's coverage of the IFTA Washington State study tour contin- ues next month in our October issue. "We actually lost a year of production by growing the trees too hard." —Jamie Jamison Honeycrisp block at Saddle Mountain West. PHOTOS BY TJ MULLINAX/GOOD FRUIT GROWER IF YOU SHARE OUR COMMITMENT TO QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS AND CUSTOMER AND CONSUMER SATISFACTION, PLEASE CONTACT ONE OF OUR PARTNERS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GROWING WITH US. superfreshgrowers.com | 151 Low Road • Yakima, WA 98908 | 509.966.1814 QUINCY FRESH FRUIT, CO.