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Orchard insect pests: biology, points of vulnerability, trap thresholds, spray specifics, natural predators, ecosystem balance.
Re: The blood runs within - 3 days ago
We are experiencing a curious phenomenon in our redfleshed apple varieties this season: the flesh is just not red! The tip-off was when we sampled our Pink Pearl and Airlie Redflesh for the first time, with much anticipation, and found them to be perfectly ripe, of excellent flavor, but decidedly white-fleshed inside. We wondered if our scionwood from years ago could have been wrong, but the flby Brittany Kordick - Apples
Re: Micronutrient maintenance sprays - 3 days ago
A small group of HON members, including myself, have been working with Dane at Crop Services International as we explore plant sap analysis this season. We share our results, sometimes do group calls with CSI, and often discuss how it's all going via email. Interestingly, one of us was just pointing out the surprising fact that all of our orchards have been consistently low in micronutrienby Brittany Kordick - Spray Nuance
Re: Japanese-style Apple Bags - 19 days ago
Now that we've reached harvest time on a number of our bagged apple varieties, I feel comfortable shouting from the rooftops that I am thrilled with the results. It is rare that I remove a bag and do not find an utterly flawless apple right next to rot-lousy ones, sooty blotched/fly specked ones, etc. In the rare event that something has gotten through, it is minimal, and usually with goodby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Press Aids - 19 days ago
FYI for anyone else interested in utilizing applewood chips as a press aid in a water bladder press: they do not appear to cause damage to the rubber bladder after all. We called Oesco to inquire about a new bladder, and the man we spoke with thought that the damage we described was normal wear and tear, given that three years (as long as we've had the press and the original bladder) is appby Brittany Kordick - Cider Maker's Handbook
Cider Apples for Sale - 20 days ago
Harvest season is underway in North Carolina and our orchard has good quantities of holistically grown cider apples available. Pricing ranges from $45 to $56 per bushel (for non crabapples). Crabapples range from $63 to $94 per bushel. Discounts available at 20 plus bushel orders. We also offer u-pick for commercial customers at a substantial discount. We are located in Westfield, NC, not farby Brittany Kordick - Orchard Classifieds
Re: Canker on Apple Tree - 30 days ago
It's hard to advise without knowing the scale of branch structure (and foliage) involved. If the affected limbs are still full of relatively healthy leaves, and make up a signifiant percentage of the tree's photosynthesizing limbs, I would probably wait until dormant season (perhaps you could mark the limbs in question so that your grandmother could have someone else come and take themby Brittany Kordick - Fungal Pathogens
Press Aids - 6 weeks ago
We are in the midst of pressing our first apples of the year, 'Early Harvest' June apples. These soft apples are not ideal pressing apples; they do the bad sauce thing, but it's been a couple of years since we pressed any and we had forgotten just how bad they were. Our notes from the first time we pressed them detail how we could not press above 2.5 bar (36.26 psi) on our Lancmaby Brittany Kordick - Cider Maker's Handbook
Re: curculio progress - 7 weeks ago
I'm glad you pointed out that plum curculio continue inhabiting and feeding in fruit trees after oviposition and traditional control time is passed. I guess it's been a long time since I revisited actual literature on curculio, and did not remember that. After your post, I worked out that the next generation of adults should have started emerging in our orchard two weeks or so ago. Wby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Ground Cloths for Harvesting - 7 weeks ago
We have a few varieties of apples that are tricky to keep track of harvest-wise since they ripen gradually and tend to just drop over a course of weeks. Rather than our usual try and keep up with them and keep the grass mowed at the right time and for the duration under the canopies, for next year we're interested in putting out harvest cloths or netting to catch them as they drop for moreby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: curculio progress - 7 weeks ago
PS: In previous years we applied Venerate exclusively for plum curculio control at 2.5 quarts per acre, always in the weeks surrounding petal fall, and never felt like we saw a difference in pressure or damage. I see the label now reads 2-4 qts per acre. I seem to remember a much wider range on the label in past years, more like 1-4 qts per acre, so they may have updated it. Anyway, it'sby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: curculio progress - 7 weeks ago
Very interesting stuff! Thanks to all who have posted here recently, and especially Chris for the latest Surround + Grandevo insights. Gives us, and I'm sure others, much food for thought for future attempts at curculio control. We stopped using Surround years ago for various reasons, but will definitely consider applying it briefly and early in the future if we stick with Grandevo goingby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: curculio progress - 2 months ago
We're finally past prime plum curculio time and can try to gauge the effects of our Grandevo apps this spring. We applied 2 lbs per acre twice surrounding petal fall, and felt like our timing was perfect. We were just starting to see the first stings in fruit, but not widespread damage. One thing about Grandevo to keep in mind is that it's slower-acting and it may be days after appliby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: Japanese-style Apple Bags - 2 months ago
Geez, you know we've got it bad when I get my mother thinking about apple tattoos, too. She had a great idea to contribute: a Cricut machine. You can work with much thinner vinyl and die-cut your own designs, get materials locally, etc. Might be prohibitively expensive to purchase a machine, but they're so trendy right now, a lot of people have them anyway for other crafting. I alby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Scythes - 2 months ago
I am embarrassed to say that I have never swung a scythe in my life. Nor, as appealing as scythes are to me, did I ever consider that one might be practical in a larger orchard. However, with fuel prices through the roof, I am curious . . . I know that many or most HON members are avid scythe users. Those of you who are, would you mind sharing what kind of acreages you're tending with aby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Japanese-style Apple Bags - 2 months ago
Wow, I feel a separate fruit tattoo thread in the making. Forget you, fireblight, I've got vastly more important things to consider . . . lobster tattoos on apples, for instance. I was just thinking about your vinyl sticker comment. Even if we found a source for "Japanese apple tattoos" stateside or imported, the stickers themselves are probably pretty standard iterations of gooby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Japanese-style Apple Bags - 2 months ago
Can't wait to hear how the Clemson bags work out for you! I was checking that website again yesterday to see if there were any updates beyond the flurry of media attention back around 2016 surrounding Dr. Schnabel's hopes to ignite an organic peach industry in the Southeast via bagging (couldn't find anything new, but glad to see you can still order bags from Clemson). It would dby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Japanese-style Apple Bags - 2 months ago
Finally getting around to playing with Japanese apple bags this season. We ordered 200 of them from Wilson Orchard and Vineyard Supply in Yakima at the cost of 9 cents per bag plus shipping, with the intention of putting 5 bags per block in many of our apple varieties. Some varieties we didn't bother bagging at all -- crab apples are too small to justify and we want them to bear in clusterby Brittany Kordick - Sensible Equipment
Re: Agriphage for Fireblight Control - 2 months ago
One final Agriphage thought: we do feel like we have taken care of a lot of our residual perennial fireblight pressure (ie, cankers) at this point. Our feeling of success comes from seeing trees that were our worst "fireblight magets" year in, year out, as some of our most pristine trees this season. Clearly, infection will always come down to weather and timing and opportunity. Likeby Brittany Kordick - Bacterial Opportunists
Re: Agriphage for Fireblight Control - 2 months ago
We are no Agriphage (or fireblight) experts, nor have we participated in any studies regarding either -- we are growers just like you who risked some skin on trying something new that there wasn't a lot of info on. I'm happy to report from the field on how it's going for us, but my "field" is in a very different part of the country than yours, with different climate, levby Brittany Kordick - Bacterial Opportunists
Re: Labs for testing plant teas - 3 months ago
I don't have any labs to recommend personally, but I'm pretty sure Michael had found one to use at least sporadically for testing his ferment mixes. I remember seeing some actual nutrient analysis from his calcium and/or silica brews at some point somewhere (it stuck out because we are hoping to experiment with making silica brews from bamboo at some point, but would definitely want toby Brittany Kordick - Grower Research
Re: Agriphage for Fireblight Control - 3 months ago
Glad to hear of your experience, Nat! It's become rare that we prune out any strikes in our orchard now that we're using Agriphage . . . and this is a huge deal, considering that previously for a few weeks around this time every year we were doing little else but pruning out strikes. Not only do we see fewer and fewer, but since they do just dry up and die we are happy to let that pruby Brittany Kordick - Bacterial Opportunists
Re: Silver Leaf - 3 months ago
Maybe we should do a monthly feature of obscure fungal diseases to dread; this is fun . . . and informative! Just wanted to say thanks for posting about this -- even if no one has dealt with silver leaf before and so this doesn't lead to meaningful discussion that helps you in your situation, it was great to be exposed to silver leaf (er, not literally) so that if I ever see anything like tby Brittany Kordick - Fungal Pathogens
Re: Which borer is this? - 3 months ago
That sure looks like a roundheaded borer to us. We've never had them in our orchard to have direct visual experience (we tend to have dogwood borers and peachtree borers get in our apples, and this looks like neither of those). However, the size of the borer in your picture is staggering to us -- our dogwood and peachtree borers are much smaller -- and it sounds like roundheaded borers wouby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: curculio progress - 3 months ago
Agreed, mixing beneficial microorganisms is necessarily really complicated, and being that it's been so much on our minds as we get into spray season, just thought I'd mention it. A lot of the reactions can't be quantified out in the orchard environment, where the success of particular microbes establishing depends on so many variables; a lot of decisions we make about biologicalby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: curculio progress - 3 months ago
We applied Grandevo last week for the first time within a variation of the core holistic recipe, and had no mixing issues. It seems to break down into the spray solution very rapidly. For what we were applying, we did make sure and follow basic rules of when to add different types of mixers, so wettable granules, like Grandevo, came first, and the oils emulsion was the last thing to go in the tby Brittany Kordick - Bug by Bug
Re: Fatty Acid Knockdown - 3 months ago
FYI, HON members in good standing can find a copy of Michael's "Holistic Orchard Framework," detailing his spray program, in The Secret Tattoo section of this website, which may satisfy interest in a "best practices" holistic spray plan. I believe it's also detailed, albeit without any recent tweaks, in at least one or two of Michael's books. Actually, what Iby Brittany Kordick - Spray Nuance
Re: 2022 Thinning trials - 3 months ago
One further thought came to mind that may be more appealing to anyone toying with thinning, always a nailbiting proposition (except for dear James who actually wants to rid himself of an entire crop): I'm becoming more interested in the idea of thinning by repelling pollinators once king blossms are demonstrably fertilized. We recently applied Grandevo for the the first time in our orchard,by Brittany Kordick - Organic Thinning
Re: 2022 Thinning trials - 3 months ago
James, thanks so much for doing this, period, and especially for taking requests! I will be very eager to hear how your baking soda trial goes -- as you mentioned above, we had planned to do extensive thinning at a 10lb/100 gal/scant acre rate this spring, but repeated hard freeze events during bloom spooked us off and we ended up doing no blossom thinning at all. So another year of potential rby Brittany Kordick - Organic Thinning
Re: Virgina Hewe's crabapple - 3 months ago
One more thought to add about Hewes came to mind as grafting season cranks up for us: Hewes will bloom on 1 year-old wood. Great from a pruning and production standpoint, but it can be really annoying from a grafting standpoint as sometimes you have to work a bit to get a nice growing tip going. We spend a lot of time carefully removing flowers whilst trying to preserve any leaves we can.by Brittany Kordick - Cider Apples
Re: plant sap analysis - 4 months ago
All right, the plant sap guinea pig has landed. We ended up sending off a sample earlier than intended in order to troubleshoot a specific orchard issue. Because none of our trees have distinguishably old vs. new leaf growth quite yet, we were not able to do a comparative analysis, but rather, sent in new leaves only. We happened to be wanting a soil test for our site-specific troubleshooting,by Brittany Kordick - Grower Research