Update March 4, 2008 OP alternatives

My March 4, 2008 post concerned a talk by Cornell's Art Agnello on OP alternatives at the Vermont Tree Fruit Growers' Annual Meeting on February, 26, 2008. Lorraine Berkett of the UVM Apple Team has posted the talk (in PDF format) on the UVM Apple Orchard. Well worth looking at...

Some catching up to do...

I have been pretty remiss about timely updates lately, and I have some catching up to do, so here goes:

Fruit Notes archive -- According to an e-mail from Wes Autio, “Fruit Notes was the first UMass publication to be digitized under the Boston Library Consortium/Internet Archive Digitization Project. This projects goal is to digitize volumes of historical significance to the various institutions in the consortium. We are very pleased to have Fruit Notes recognized this way.
“Within this archive, you can search the Table of Contents, either a few years at a time or within all years at once. You also can search within the text of the articles. Adobe pdf, flip-page, and DjVu versions of all articles from 1935 to 2004 are available.”

‘Apple Scion/Rootstock planning for Michigan’ and associated tree spacing calculator -- Don’t be mislead by the title, the tree spacing calculator is mostly appropriate for any humid growing environment in the Northeast. With the calculator, you can input the most important factors that determine tree spacing: scion, rootstock, soil, irrigation, management intensity, orchard system, and tree height. The result is recommended tree spacing -- feet between trees by feet across rows, number of trees per acre -- for your choice(s). Anyone planting trees this spring should give it try to justify their tree planting density decision. The apple tree spacing calculator was recently revised by Dr. Ron Perry of Michigan State University and myself to include new rootstocks and orchard/training systems.

1st Annual Precision Sprayer Conference -- Mo Tougas (Tougas Family Farm) and myself attended this Conference convened by Dr. Andrew Landers (Cornell University) April 8 - 9 on the shores of Canandaigua Lake in western New York. Landers brought in speakers from research, industry, government, and growers to update us on the latest technologies and progress made to reduce drift, better target applications, and retain good pest control while orchard and vineyard spraying. Clearly the impetus to minimize spray drift for various environmental, social, and regulatory reasons is upon those of us doing tree and/or vine spraying. Fortunately, the use of various canopy sensors ('smart' sprayers), new nozzle technology (air-induction), sprayer design (tunnel, tower sprayers), and orchard architecture (taller, narrower canopies) are making the goal of drift reduction somewhat easier. But there is more work to do -- expect very new technologies currently being researched, such as robotics, 'Lidar,' precision GPS guidance, and lessons learned from field crop spraying to have a greater role in making the goal of precision spraying a reality in the not-so-distant future. Oh, and I had a little time (very little) to relax while at the Inn on the Lake. (See pict above.)

Current bud stages, UMass Cold Spring Orchard -- I have started my annual update of current bud stages (apple, pear, peach, cherry, plum, apricot, grape) on the UMass Fruit Advisor. FWIW. But in reality, I have now been doing this since 2001 (8 years including 2008!), so it is starting to be a pretty good historical picture of bloom timing at the Orchard. (See Clements Corner Web Articles for past years.) FWIW. Still, I kind of enjoy doing it and I get some visual scouting done while taking the pictures. :-) Interestingly, I just ran across Project BudBurst. Although apple is not specifically a species of interest for Project Budburst, it is apparently one of the two agricultural Calibration Plant Species of interest for the U.S.A. National Phenology Network (USA-NPN). But I have yet to find where I can report my observations...

VT Tree Fruit Growers' Assoc. Meeting and OrganoPhosphate Alternatives

Although I gave two talks last week at the Vermont Tree Fruit Growers' Association 112th Annual Meeting in Middlebury, VT, so did Art Agnello from Cornell University. I thought his talk "OP Alternatives in Apple Arthropod Management" was most interesting. In that he laid-out a season-long program for controlling the major insect pests in northeast apple orchards using mostly new, 'reduced-risk' insecticide alternatives to Guthion, Imidan, etc. I actually took notes:

PINK spray for RAA and LM...

• Actara, Assail, Calypso
• Movento* for RAA
  

PETAL FALL spray...

• for PC: Actara, Avaunt, Calypso
• for EAS: Actara, Assail, Avaunt, Calypso, Altacor*
• for internal leps (CM, OFM): Assail, Avaunt, Calypso, Delegate, Intrepid, Rimon, Altacor*, Belt*
• for OBLR: B.t., Delegate, Intrepid, Proclaim, Rimon, Altacor*, Belt*

SUMMERS sprays...

• for LM, LH, aphids: Assail, Avaunt, Calypso, Provado, Movento*
• for internal leps (CM, OFM): same as PETAL FALL
• for OBLR: same as PETAL FALL
• for AMF: Assail, Calypso, Delegate

*new insecticide, probably not available for 2008, but most likely for 2009

NYS Fruit & Veg Conference

A few trade show newbies from the New York State Fruit & Vegetable Conference (Feb. 13 and 14, 2008) in Syracuse, NY:

• I just asked about 'Gale' Gala on the apple-crop discussion group and here it is, thanks to Adams County Nursery. Turns out it is a solid red, similar to 'Buckeye' Gala. A limb sport from Washington. They look good, but some have concerns about it being too much like 'Buckeye' without a characteristic Gala appearance. You be the judge.
  
• John Harper, AMVAC technical representative with the new Fruitone-L label. Fruitone-L is a liquid formulation of Fruitone-N, which will make handling easier. Transitioning from -N to -L will be simple too -- the liquid ounce of -L is equivalent in amount of NAA to the solid weight ounce of -N. In other words, if you used 4 oz. of Fruitone-N to get 10 PPM of NAA per 100 gallons, you would use 4 liquid oz. of Fruitone-L to get 10 ppm in 100 gallons. Interestingly, the AMVAC label for -L suggests a rate of 1.0 to 4.0 ounces per 100 gallons on 'moderately difficult-to-thin' varieties such as Gala, Honeycrisp, Ginger Gold, Jonagold, and Empire, which equates to 2.5 to 10 PPM. The -N label, in the same table, uses PPM only -- no mention of rate in oz. Interesting.
• Paul Wooley of Stark Bros. has something new up his sleeve, and no, it is not 'Candy Crisp' on the information sheet he his holding. (Although he is still high on it!) The red apple concealed under his left hand is a chance seedling discovered in a hedge row in the Hudson Valley, which although Mac-like in appearance, Paul says had a very high firmness at maturity (like 28 lbs.), and was still firm and tart-sweet at this point (I tried a slice) despite what he says was being kept under less-than-ideal conditions under 'garage' storage. Keep on plugging those Candy Crisp for now Paul!
  
• OESCO's Howard Boyden shows off a Lancman water operated fruit press. This Slovenian beauty is stainless steel, and can be loaded with five bushels (of chopped) apples with an output of 15 gallons of juice/cider. Ideal for the hobby fruit grower or very small marketer of fruit juice(s). Note that it can be used for grapes (wine makers, have to be crushed and de-stemmed first) and other fruits too, such as cherries (?) or peaches/plums.
• Mark Shannon of Suterra holds one of his CheckMate mating disruption products, in this case the sprayable formulation for oriental fruit moth. Suterra also manufactures traditional clip-on dispensers and a new 'Puffer' applicator for codling moth. Time-release dispensers and the 'Puffer' are OMRI approved.
• Steve Zimmerman of Valent Biosciences is proud of their new label for Clutch insecticide, an new neonicotinoid insecticide that is effective on most insects with chewing or sucking mouth-parts, including aphids, leafhoppers, leafminers, apple maggot, codling moth, plum curculio, and more. It is registered for use on apples and pears. Steve says there is 3 feet of snow on the ground up in south-central Maine where he lives!
• Finally, Cynthia Turski, IPM Product Specialist with Spectrum Technologis shows off one of their new 2000 series WatchDog weather stations. These stations are ideal for pest/disease forecasting, particularly with the optional Apple/Pear alert software package.
  

BTW, all picts taken with Apple's iPhone -- I can't recommend it highly enough, for many reasons, among them, this.

4 easy steps to peach pruning

Normally we don't prune peaches until April or May, however, the warm weather last week and an upcoming presentation with a need to have a video on peach pruning prompted us to do this. Wes Autio, Professor of Pomology, UMass Amherst, demonstrates a simplified '4-step' method for pruning young peach trees. These peaches, 'PF-14 New Jersey,' planted at the UMass Cold Spring Orchard will be in their third growing season, and are being trained to an open-center. During the first two years, excess branching was left to establish the trees and force some branching 'out,' but now is the time to select the permanent scaffold limbs and prepare the tree for fruiting -- we would hope to pick about 20 lbs. of fruit off this tree this year. In reality, further shoot and fruit thinning may likely have to be done this spring after a crop is set. Enjoy.

It's January

It's January. What can I say? (Happy New Year?) At least the days are getting longer. Some significant events over the past few weeks (or month):

1.) New England Vegetable and Fruit Conference in December. Well-attended, but a major snowstorm on the last day made getting home very difficult -- 'historic' gridlock on major highways in east and south New England. It took us 6 hours to drive from Manchester, NH to Belchertown, MA, normally a 2 hour ride.

2.) Northeast Meeting of American Society for Hort. Science, at Rutgers last week. Presented a poster '5-year performance of three dwarf apple rootstocks with Cameo apple.'

3.) Got home from that meeting and saw that it had fallen to -12 F. in Chicopee, MA last Friday morning. We got down to -4.3 F. in Belchertown. Not low enough to do any damage to stone fruit, but getting there. I would hold off on apple pruning until the weather becomes more seasonable.

4.) You got to see this to believe it: http://edwardsorchard.info. Ken Hall was president of IDFTA when we were helping them with their website several years ago, and I could not imagine a more supportive, intelligent, and well-rounded individual. What happened to them last week is simply unbelievable. But, as you can see, their cup is always half (or more) full! What is the deal with this weather? Imagine if this had happened during the growing season or when they were open for business? I guess they were ultimately very lucky in that no one was hurt, it happened this time of the year -- giving them time to rebuild -- and new opportunities abound. Good luck Ken and family/Edwards Orchard with rebuilding.

5.) I have been working on revising the herbicide section(s) of the 2008 New England Tree Fruit Pest Management Guide. Keeping up with all the label changes and new products is not easy. There seems to be rapid change in the agri-chemical industry with new products being introduced and manufacturer changes. Which begs the question -- how do YOU get your detailed pesticide information (i.e., rates, re-entry and pre-harvest intervals, labeled crops, etc.)? Please take my survey right above.

6.) AGR/AGR-Lite Crop Insurance Meeting on January 28.

6.) Finally, just found out MFGA was awarded a $95,000 grant from Mass. Dept. Ag. Resources Ag. Innovation. This, to plant 10 acres of tall-spindle orchard in 10 MA orchards over the next two years. Should be an interesting project, more on it to come.

JC

Colorado NC-140 video