Good Fruit Grower

August 2012

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ROOTSTOCK – VARIETIES – POLLINATION Quality from the Start APPLES Aztec Fuji® (DT2 variety) Joburn Braeburn™ Blondee® Brookfield® Gala Buckeye® Gala Cameo® brand Granny Smith Honeycrisp JonaStar® Jonagold Kumeu Crimson® LindaMac® It® Red Delicious POLLENIZERS Indian Summer Manchurian CHERRIES Attika® Benton™ Bing Black Tartarian BlackPearl™ PEARS Bartlett Redcort® Ruby Jon® Ruby Mac™ Mariri Red™ Braeburn Morning Mist™ Early Fuji Phil Schwallier and Amy Irish-Brown have good records showing Fruit Ridge weather this spring. Growers can use this data to evaluate what happened in their orchards. Smoothee® Golden Spartan Morren's® Jonagored Supra™ Mt. Blanc Ultima™ Gala Zestar!® Learning from THE FREEZE Eastern growers are studying their Mt. Evereste Chelan™ Pearleaf orchards to see what survived and why. by Richard Lehnert Snowdrift EbonyPearl™ RadiancePearl™ Hudson BurgundyPearl™ Early Robin® Regina Rainier Lapins Columbia Red Anjou™ Forelle Concorde™ Comice PEACHES Allstar Autumnstar® Blazingstar D'Anjou Golden Russet Bosc® Blushingstar Glowingstar Brightstar™ Redhaven Coral Star Redstar Earlystar™ Elberta Selah™ Montmorency Rainier Sam Sweetheart Tieton® Ulster Van Skeena™ hile scientists warn that extreme weather events will become more common as carbon dioxide levels continue to build in the atmosphere, Great Lakes region fruit growers hope this year's freeze event is one of those once-in-a-hundred-years events and not something to expect repeatedly or even again in their lifetimes. "If this were going to happen once every five years, we'd have to get out of the fruit White Gold Red Clapp's Favorite Red Sensation Bartlett Seckel Risingstar Starfire Flamin' Fury® Series PF-19-007 PF-7 PF-24-007 PF-17 PF-35-007 PF-25 PF Lucky 13 Varieties listed may not reflect current inventory. REPRESENTATIVES Leonard Aubert Jim Adams Hood River, Oregon Washington State (541) 308-6008 aubert@gorge.net (509) 670-7879 Larry Traubel Rick Turton Cedaredge, Colorado Kelowna, B.C. (970) 856-3424 ltraubel@hotmail.com (250) 860-3805 Ephrata, Washington | www.willowdrive.com WILLOW DRIVE NURSERY, INC. 1-888-54-TREES 42 AUGUST 2012 GOOD FRUIT GROWER Rey Allred Payson, Utah jimadams@willowdrive.com business," said Mike Wittenbach, who grows 225 acres of apples near Belding, Michigan, with his father, Ed. "My grandfather and great-uncle talk about what happened in 1945, and we'd like to think these things don't happen very often." He recalls hearing their stories about picking a bushel of apples off the top of a 30- foot-tall tree—but Mike isn't planning to go back to seedling rootstocks to get treetops searching for warmer air. One thing Mike has learned is the value of wind machines. "We have 12 now, and we're about 70 percent covered. We need more. We have about 25 percent of a crop, and we'd have had 5 percent without them." Still, he estimates it cost him $30,000 to run his 12 machines for 18 cold April nights. The cold winds that came with the freezes during the last weekend of April in Michi- gan this year cut the effectiveness of the wind machines, he said. "They weren't a silver bullet this year," he said. "They helped; irrigation helped." Mike figures that a wind machine should be helpful within a radius of about 350 to 450 feet. With the winds from the north this year, he said, the area covered was an oval shape extending from about 100 feet north of a wind tower to 300 to 350 feet southwest. "It's pretty much location. On the south side of wind machines, we got fruit." Wittenbach has also looked at varieties. "Variety matters very much. We have more Galas and Ruby Jons, which are much later blooming, and our earliest bloomers are about wiped out. We have hardly any Paulareds." Honeycrisp, which is medium to late in blooming, "took it on the chin this year," he said. But there are other factors. "We had a big crop last year, and they like to be biennial. If we hadn't overproduced last year, they may have done better this year." It would be really useful to have some tool to hold back bloom, he said. "I'm surprised we got as far as we did," he said. "We had crop persisting through all the (801) 465-2321 April freezes, right up to April 29." Undertree irrigation helped. "There's more fruit showing up there," he said. He also believes that tree health made a difference. He's not sure how it works, but trees that have adequate amounts of nutrients, especially the micronutrient zinc, seem to have healthier buds that are more resistant to freeze damage. "Where we can gain a degree or two, it helps," he said. With a quarter crop, Mike was maintaining all the trees the same as he normally would. After the second-generation codling moth sprays are done, he'll evaluate the crop again and decide whether to maintain a full pest-control program. Ohio grower Eshleman Fruit Farm on the south side of Lake Erie in Clyde, Ohio, shared the misfor- tune of fruit growers in a broad swath across the Great Lakes region. Richard Eshleman has about a quarter of an apple crop. "It's amazing how the peaches survived," he said, noting that most of his fruit was okay until the last weekend of April. "That was a killer for us," he said. Sweet and tart cherries were nearly all lost. www.goodfruit.com Photo by richard lehnert

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