From The Road: IFTA Conference Day 4
February 25, 2015 [blackoutgallery id=”70771″]
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Renewal pruning, making the big cuts, rootstock selection, tree spacing. These seem to be the general topics of conversation – or lively debate – on the orchard tour components of any International Fruit Tree Association annual conference.
Earlier in the week Terence Robinson quipped that being a researcher on these educational tours can be tough.
Win Cowgill snapped this one of me while at Eisses Farm.
“It’s a pressure-packed job. Once I make the first cut, people say ‘I can do better than Robinson. He just threw out a bushel of apples,’” he says.
Tuesday was no different. However, Mother Nature did try to throw a monkey wrench in things – growers opening up their orchards and facilities to the buses and tour goers had to clear close to a foot and a half of snow in order for us to even be able to reach the trees.
After navigating around the snowbanks or just wading through, one of the hottest topics was hedging, specifically Alberto Dorigoni’s concept of fruiting walls. Dorigoni, of Istituto Agrario Di San Michele All’Adige in South Tyrol, Italy, says a grower should use a mechanical hedger to make several “windows” into the canopy. Branches of shorter and longer variations create windows throughout the canopy – some longer and shorter sections – to allow light to penetrate the center of the tree.
Rod Farrow of LaMont Fruit Farm talked on Monday about using the LaGasse hedger to “set the box” for dormant pruning, or the shape of the fruiting wall. Then, he goes back in and creates windows, by pruning out any large branches in his fruiting walls to get more light into the inner part of this canopy. He then comes back in July or August with the hedger to clip new growth to 1 to 2 inches outside the box, depending on the vigor. He does not want to set additional flower buds with the summer pruning because those buds would be outside the box.
Bud counting was also an important discussion on this tour. Terence Robinson had Leo Dominguez, Mario Miranda Sazo, and the crowd count buds on a particular tree. Then, based on input from the desired yield from the grower, he determined how many buds he needed to leave on the tree to meet the growers criteria, and started cutting away. With each cut, he’d have Leo, Mario, and the crowd figure out how many more cuts he needed to make. These cuts were to not only get rid of big wood but also to help the tree appropriately grow the necessary crop.
In a young block at Canard Orchards, Robinson and Rod Farrow talked about the need of 2-year-old trees to fill the canopy as opposed to carrying fruit. Gerry VanOostrum said his orchard had a lot of fire blight and out of concern for exacerbating the problem, he didn’t make the cuts on his trees needed. Robinson and Farrow did say the cuts were needed.
“It’s so critical to grow an orchard in the first two years,” Robinson says.
At Eisses Farm, the topic of rootstock came up. Some of the most productive Honeycrisp blocks are on B.9, and are moving toward higher density plantings. Robinson, of course has said it’s important for growers to find the rootstock that works well to provide high yields and high quality.
He encourages growers to select Geneva rootstocks because many show fire blight resistance and replant disease resistance and can help growers control vigor or are precocious enough for low-vigor varieties.
The topic came up that Geneva rootstocks were unavailable. One person suggested it might be better to plant trees on a good rootstock that isn’t your first pick as opposed to waiting for the right rootstock three years down the road. Because in three years’ time, money will be made on the apple grown from those trees planted, whereas you’ll just be getting started with trees from your ideal rootstock.
When You’re Here, You’re Family
In grand IFTA tour fashion, tour goers on each individual bus introduced themselves – or at least everyone on my bus did. One thing that stuck me was how many times the concept of family and lifelong friendship came up as a “takeaway” from this tour. Although growers leave armed with new things to try on their orchards, the most important part is just how much of a community growing apples can be. With the number of farms and farmers dwindling, it’s best for growers to band together to support the community.
More Updates
For more from IFTA, be sure to check out my Twitter feed @HerrickAFG, where I am sending updates from all the sessions and catch the April issue of American Fruit Grower magazine for a recap of the conference. Missed one of the recaps? Check out Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.
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