What's with these apple prices?

I was in a Big-Y 'World Class' Market here in Amherst, MA this afternoon, and was quite taken aback by the pricing on some of these apples I saw (click on the link for a picture):

Fresh sweet Jazz apples, $3.69/lb.

Organically grown sweet crisp Fuji apples, $3.99/lb.

Organic Royal Gala apples, $5.99/lb.

Organically grown Gold Delicious apples, $3.99/lb.

New Zealand Braeburn apples, $1.88/lb. (regular price $2.49/lb.)

Organic Red Delicious apples, $3.49/lb.

Granny Smith apples, $2.29/lb.

$5.99/lb. for Organic Royal Gala apples???!!! Is anyone buying these things? (To be honest, it looks like the most popular item was the NZ Braeburn for $1.88/lb.) And we sell direct-market, locally grown, 'world class' quality apples for about an average of $1.00/lb. There is a disconnect here, and I am sure there are many reasons and opinions for and about it, so I'd like to hear them. I have to ask again -- Organic Royal Gala apples, $5.99/lb., is anyone buying these? Oh, and notice Big-Y is pretty good about adding value to some of the apple variety descriptions. Ciao.

Jon Clements for what???

Hail damage to apples...

Hail is one of the most short-term devastating weather events that can happen to an apple grower. It's so bad we usually don't like to talk about it. But this year, it has been so widespread -- from New York, to Michigan, to parts of the the Northeast (including New England and mid-Atlantic region) -- that it is likely to put a dent (no pun intended) in the production of marketable apples in the U.S. (On top of a spring freeze which diminished the Washington apple crop.) Hail is a good reason to purchase crop insurance. (Enough said.) Growers who have been hailed usually attempt to make the best of it by hand-thinning out obvious culls (pictured above), but that is a labor-intensive (= costly) input that at best might help them break even. It is truly sad. A few growers have asked me what they should do in terms of a spray program -- particularly for diseases -- when they have been hit by hail? First and foremost, they must apply streptomycin in orchards with a history of/or potential for fire blight infection. This has to be applied within 24 hours of the hail. Other than that, Cornell's Dr. David Rosenberger published a synopsis of what kind of spray program should be maintained in a hail-damaged orchard in Scaffolds Fruit Journal recently.

On the bright side, most growers try to make the best of it, and highlight the fact "we still have apples!" (Which is true.) But it's tough and I feel for them...

UMass Video Fruit Advisor, July 1, 2008: Lorsban trunk spray for peachtree borer

What shall we do with a drunken sailor...

McIntosh 'visual' fruit thinning with numbers

Having reviewed A Growers Guide to Predicting the Response to a Chemical Thinner Application developed by Dr. Duane Greene, I decided that I did not have the time to complete the full measurement protocol, however, I was very interested in doing some fruit measurements and getting a 'visual' history of how a group (30) of 'Redmax' McIntosh apple trees trained to a super-spindle would behave during the fruit set and thinning period. (I also did not think I really needed to take all the measurements and use the accompanying predicting apple thinning spreadsheet in this small group of trees to get a handle on what was going on.)

So, I selected and tagged 5 spurs on 5 trees, and using digital calipers measured all the fruitlets on each spur (beginning 20-May) for a total of 125 spurs. I felt this was good representation of the fruit spurs on this group of trees. I made subsequent measurements on 24-May, 1-June, and 11-June for a total of 4 measurement dates.

I applied thinning sprays as follows: first, a petal-fall spray of Sevin XLR Plus (Bayer CropScience) on 17-May at 1.5 pt./acre, and then Maxcel (Valent BioSciences) on 25-May at 75 ppm. Note that the first thinning spray was applied 3 days before the first measurement date (20-May), and that Maxcel was applied between the 2nd (24-May) and 3rd (1-June) measurement dates. I should also mention that from June 7–11, temperatures exceeded 90 F. each day. (Temperature chart | Light chart)

Here are the visual results (click on a tree number below). They should be self-explanatory, but for each tree there are 5 spurs (rows), and 4 columns for each measurement date. The numbers under the picture(s) are the actual fruit measurements in mm.

Tree 1 | Tree 2 | Tree 3 | Tree 4 | Tree 5

So what? Well, by 24-June it was not clear to me if the petal fall spray of Sevin had done enough to thin the crop fully, although I was starting to see some pretty good size differentiation of (mostly) the king fruit. So I proceeded with the Maxcel spray at a moderate rate. By 1-June, however, it had become pretty clear that things were thinning down quite nicely and I decided that the two thinning applications were headed in the right direction. The heat wave described above cinched things for me.

Looking at the figures for final fruit set, it ranges from 8 to 20 %. I still have to make one final check to see how many fruit remain, and need to do an estimate of how many fruit I want per tree. My conclusion at this point, however, is that I have certainly thinned enough, and in fact, there may be less fruit per tree than I would like to reach my yield per acre goal of 600 to 700 boxes/acre.

Finally, my overall conclusion is that this process certainly helped me get a very good visual and numerical picture of what was going on. I do think I would have reached mostly the same conclusion without taking the measurements while using observation and experience to ascertain how my thinning sprays had worked and where final fruit set was ultimately headed.

It's here...

I found fire blight today in a block of 1st leaf Golden Delicious apples. (See more pictures.) Not unexpected, these trees had quite a profuse bloom. I suspect they were in bloom during the last week in May, which saw an increased -- in fact, threatening -- risk of fire blight. Of course existing apples were already mostly past bloom, with the exception of some cider varieties, so they were immune. But 1st leaf trees often get planted a little late, take a while to break bud and bloom, and can be in bloom when the weather conditions that favor fire blight are more likely. Thus, my recommendation is to plant as early as possible, apply copper after planting, de-bloom the trees, or make sure to apply streptomycin sprays as the trees bloom and weather indicates a high risk of fire blight infection. You do not want to get fire blight in a 1st leaf orchard on dwarf rootstocks! See F-133 An Annual Fire Blight Management Program for more information. But, in a nutshell for this grower, I would recommend first pruning out all the visible strikes (on a dry day), and maybe treating with a lower rate of copper once or twice. (Cuprofix MZ Disperss from Cerexagri-Nisso would be a good choice, it contains both copper and mancozeb.) Good luck.