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Orchard Management


Winter pruning is the important starting point tomake sure you get the best you can at pack-out.


W


hen the pack-outs come in and then the first payment, it becomes painfully obvious that when it comes to apples, size does matter. It changes from year to year but generally size 80s to 100s is where the money is.


The grower who consistently mixes the right size with high colour and few defects wins the pot, no matter what the overall price trends are like. The grower with small fruit — that is, fruit with an average of 100s and smaller — will possibly return half the cents per pound.


Believe me, the number of pounds or bins you produce does not matter if most of the fruit should have stayed on the tree or hit the ground. The pounds of packed fruit per bin are what counts, not the number of bins picked. Many growers seemed to be fixated on number of bins or sheer tonnage no matter what the size or grade. Granted, poor returns are poor returns, but if the same amount of effort is directed differently you can go for the higher side of the price for any given variety and do as well as the market will permit. What would you rather do, receive 20 to 25 cents or 8 to 12 cents? I am going to assume you would like to make more net dollars perhaps a few less bins, lower picking costs and more dollars per acre.


It starts now, with winter pruning. How much growth did your various blocks put on this past season; how heavy a crop did they carry? Light crop trees this past year are likely to crop heavy next year, and should be pruned more heavily to reduce crop load for next season.


If you prune more heavily, generally use less fertilizer or just go with foliar fertilizers next year. This sounds pretty simple – but it really isn’t. In fact it’s pretty easy to screw it up.


You need to have a good feeling for each variety’s habit of growing (by that I mean its inherent style of growth), the need for light and how all the


By Peter Waterman Size does matter with apple returns


combinations of crop load, fertilizer use, soil moisture, pruning, tree vigour go together. One of the main keys to larger fruit is larger spur leaves. These leaves right around the fruit bud determine the size and strength of the fruit bud. Strong, fat


fruit buds deliver bigger fruit and you can start to see this right after bloom. These fruit will stay on the tree when using thinning materials while weaker side blooms are removed. Also, they stay on when weaker fruit in shaded areas will be removed.


The first key to larger spur leaves is light, so you must look at how light is penetrating the tree. The top section of the tree must have weaker shorter branches, what I like to call a “soft top.” Have no mercy; remove limbs and branches that are more than 30 to 50 percent of the trunk diameter where the branch arises from the main tree stem. It is very easy to look at a branch that should really be removed and say “Boy, that has a lot of buds and potentially a lot of fruit.” But if it is too strong and thick it will suck too much vigour and any cuts you make on it will have an excessive growth response.


In addition, it shades the areas below. As well, if it is too high in the tree the top gets too heavy, branches lower in the tree will suffer and lose vigour, and the fruiting zone gradually moves up the tree. The result is less fruit where the bulk of the tree is, and what fruit is in the lower portions of the tree will be small and poorly coloured. After light, the question is how to


actually encourage vigour of the spur leaves. The only truly effective way is to consistently prune the spurs. You can examine spurs and determine how old they are.


Long spur systems have rings representing growth of the spur each year. Many times these spur systems are five to 10 years of age or older. As spurs age they get weaker and the fruit buds on them get smaller and weaker. Weak fruit buds often will not set a fruit, or if they do set, the fruit is small and poorly coloured.


Too many old spur systems throughout the tree result in unpredictable response to fruit thinners. Too many years of this occurring means consistently poor fruit sizes and poor returns. Even blocks of varieties of reasonably high paying fruit gradually go downhill.


Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying prices are good, all I’m saying that even in poor markets some growers are receiving more cents per pound for their fruit than other growers. Now is the time when you can have the most impact on returns. It starts with removal of large limbs that block light and is followed by spur pruning to invigorate spur systems.


Water management may be the second most important factor along with early thinning and an effectively tailored fertilizer program, all these factors together will determine fruit size, grade and quality and hence better average returns. I will try to deal with water management and its impact on fruit quality in another column. — Retired grower and


horticulturist Peter Waterman can be reached at peter@omedia.ca


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