Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/572389
www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER OCTOBER 2015 25 removed. The number of buds in each remaining cluster is then reduced. Cuevas said it's easy to explain to work- ers that they need to reduce the buds from fi ve to three, for example. Before green fruit thinning, the manager will have fi g- ured out how many fruit are needed per tree to produce the desired yield. "Before we start hand fruit thinning, we make sure we know how many fruit per tree and per acre we need," Cuevas said. "Don't have people just start throwing fruit on the ground." A person needs to count the fruit on a couple of trees to demonstrate to the crew what a tree with, say, 120 apples looks like versus a tree with 170, he said. Dale Goldy, assistant general manager at Stemilt Ag Services, said they used to use a chemical bloom-thin- ning program of lime sulfur and oil but they would either get too much thinning or not enough. When the crop was overthinned there was inadequate return bloom and the risk of bitterpit increased. When the crop was underthinned it exacerbated Honeycrisp's tendency to produce large fruit, so the apples were enormous. Also, overcropped trees tend to produce low quality fruit. "With the cluster thinning we've been doing, it's taken away the risk of overthinning or underthinning," he said, estimating the cost of hand cluster and fruit thinning at $2,000 per acre. "With the value of the crop, the cost of hand cluster thinning is not signifi cant. The process from prebloom to the end of July of slowly adjusting the crop load to the right amount is a huge part of our bitter pit/ fruit size strategy, plus getting resting spurs in there to get our return bloom." Goldy said as harvest approaches it's important to thin again to make sure there are no triples. Because of the size of the fruit, apples in clusters tend to knock each other off as they grow. "With our fruit size, you can't go to harvest with triples," he said. If there are still too many apples on the tree when the fruit is thinned to doubles, the crew takes off whole doubles, rather than thinning to singles, because of the diffi culty of removing one apple without knocking the other one off and because single apples grow too big. A month before harvest, the fruit-to-leaf ratio is adjusted so the crop will mature properly. It's a continual process of counting and adjusting the crop, said Goldy. "We do bud counting, cluster counting, fruit counting—we're always working on counts to manage crop load, from pruning all the way through." An IFTA tour member asked why the company doesn't simply adjust the crop to the desired load right from the start, which would seem logical to growers in other regions. "A lot of us have trouble with size, and we can't fathom the fact that you are worried about it and can overcrop your trees," the tour member said. "I've been notorious for growing 48s and 36s, despite some of our efforts, particularly in fourth- and fi fth-leaf blocks," Goldy replied. "And that's all heat-unit related here in this climate. We try to mitigate cell division and fruit growth rate by trying to fi nd a balance between rest- ing spurs and crop load. For us, it's a season long effort to get the right fruit size, minimize our bitter pit exposure, and get return bloom through resting spurs." However, Jamie Jamison, Stemilt's regional manager for Mattawa and Othello, said it's diffi cult to keep up with apple thinning this year because of a tight labor supply in Washington. The company hired workers through the H-2A foreign guest worker program, but most were kept busy picking cherries at other orchards during the summer. "Honeycrisp is a fantastic apple for our returns," Jamison said. "The fi nancial returns on a per-acre basis have been fantastic. But they are a challenge. The more acres you get, the harder it is to execute the very detailed job that needs to be done. You'd better be prepared to have dedicated crews, which we're working on now." • Washington State grower Bruce Allen leaves some Honeycrisp apples growing in clusters for part of the season to prevent them from growing too big. PHOTOS BY TJ MULLINAX/GOOD FRUIT GROWER