Fruit Grower’s Journal

I put a bag of Honeycrisp apples on the counter just before Christmas and just finished eating the last one – it was still crisp and delicious.  Most apples though will not maintain that just picked flavor and crispness very long if kept at room temperature.  Keeping apples cold – very cold – is the key to keeping them fresh. Apples you purchase from a local farm stand will likely last at least several weeks in the home refrigerator, but will soften quickly if kept at room temperature.  If I had stored those Honeycrisp in the icebox they would have been great to eat even a couple of months after I brought them home.

Mutsu is another apple that stores really well.  Like Honeycrisp it will keep in the home refrigerator for several months.  It grows well in southern counties, but ripens too late and lacks the hardiness needed for northern parts of the state.

A nice crop of Mutsu apples in a New Hampshire Orchard.  Photo: W.Lord

Of course, there are many other varieties that will store well, most ripening in October in New Hampshire.  Red and Golden Delicious, the scab free variety Liberty, and older varieties like Baldwin and Northern Spy all have their fans.  And always, the key is to get them cold and keep them cold.

Pruning is the next big orchard task, just not quite yet.  While temperatures have been uniformly cold for some time now and it is surely safe to prune mature trees, I like to delay pruning until March if possible. Of course, if I have a lot to get done, I have no choice but to get going now; however, I save the younger trees for last.  I will list upcoming pruning demonstrations – you may want to join in the fun as I subdue a tree or two.

Bill Lord, January 7, 2010

I just had to lead with a picture of this bin of HoneyCrisp apples on its way to storage. Photo: W.Lord

Do you want to preserve that just picked flavor and crispness of your apples as long as possible?

Of all the factors that affect how well apples keep that fresh-picked flavor and crispness, temperature is the most important.  How cold?  For most varieties, storage at 32^oF or nearly so is ideal.

Why so cold? Apples are alive. They consume oxygen and stored food to produce the energy needed for life.  At lower temperatures, this process is slowed way down.  As a result they live much longer.

Of course, there is more to it than temperature.  High humidity is important too – around 90% relative humidity is ideal.  If you are storing apples in a frost-free home refrigerator, placing them in a loosely folded, food-grade plastic bag will help.

Bright red, crisp McIntosh fruits await harvest at a Concord Orchard. Photo: W.Lord

Apple quality this season appears to be especially good.  Fruits are crisp and color is exceptional – those cool, clear New Hampshire nights and sunny, warmish days are just perfect for people and apples too.

Bill Lord, September 23, 2009

Fresh pressed, sweet apple cider is a sure sign of autumn.  Most growers blend apples to achieve a cider flavor unique to their farm.  McIntosh and Cortland have long been important sweet cider blending apples, but Gala, Golden Delicious, Mutsu, Paulared, and several other varieties now contribute their unique flavors the mix.  To keep that cider at it best, be sure to keep it in the refrigerator.

Which apple makes the best pie or the perfect apple crisp? Again, personal taste is the key.  I happen to like pies made with McIntosh apples.  Yes, these pies tend to be juicy, but one of the characteristics that makes McIntosh special, that incredible bouquet, helps make McIntosh pies special too.

Gala has quickly become a favorite for apple crisp with some avid bakers.  It is sweet and juicy and its flavor marries well with spices.   As for a good all around cooking apple, my wife prefers the Cortland.  It has a pleasing apple taste, resists browning, and peels easily.

One autumn treat I really enjoy is fresh, warm, skillet-made sauce.  Apples are peeled, cut into slices, cooked in a skillet, seasoned with cinnamon and served warm on the dinner plate.  No sugar is ever needed.  We like to use a mix of apples, a few McIntosh, perhaps a Golden Delicious or two, Mutsu, Honeycrisp, Gala – whatever is ripe and naturally sweet.  We may toss in a pear for a flavor twist.

Variety of the Week

Pears are wonderful fruits.  This one, a red-skinned pear named Stark Crimson is no different.  It is large and ripens early, usually by very early September in southern New Hampshire.  While it does not store well, Stark Crimson pear has sweet, melting flesh and is great in its season – it is one of those fruits that is best served with a napkin.

Beautiful, red-skinned Stark Crimson pears hang awaiting harvest.  Photo: W.Lord

Red-skinned pears are gaining popularity in the market.  They please the palate and are attractive additions to fresh salads and the like.

Bill Lord, September 11, 2009

The fall apple harvest is on.  Many orchards are reporting that apples are ripe earlier than usual this year, likely the result of a summer that had weather that was at best odd.  But then again, we say that about the weather every year.  It reminds me of something my grandfather often said when I was young – “there are two crops every year, the one you lose in the spring and the one you pick in the fall.”

My comment on GingerGold last week drew a quick response from a New Durham grower who noted that I wasn’t the only one who found them tasty.  His wife sent along this picture of one of their “after hours” customers.

This porcupine has great taste! Unfortunately, his appetite for fruit and bark cannot be tolerated. Photo: Phebe Leonard

Apples that are juicy and crisp, sweet cider, fresh baked apple pies, fall peaches that really should be served with a napkin and other goodies like fall raspberries and pears – a visit to a local farm in the autumn is a must.  Want to pick some delicious, New Hampshire apples for your family or pick up one of those pies?  Visit this listing of New Hampshire orchards where you can find the orchard nearest you.

Bill Lord, September 4, 2009

I munched a GingerGold apple the other day, one I had just picked off a tree.  It was crunchy and had a nice tart bite to it – not much perks up the palate like a just picked apple.

The apple crop looks great!  While all the rain made for a tough year battling weeds and diseases, fruit have grown very well.

Apple harvest is just getting going and will last through October.  Our mainline varieties like McIntosh and Cortland, HoneyCrisp, and Macoun will ripen in September while October will bring varieties like Mutsu, Delicious, and Golden Delicious.  Of course, right now it is summer varieties we are eating, ones like Paulared, Gingergold, and Pristine.

How do you know when an apple is ripe and ready to eat?

We use a lot of techniques to tell when they are ripe.  The most important is of course taste.  Color is another important sign we watch.  In particular, we watch the ground color (that background of green beneath the red).  As the apple ripens, the green gradually lightens.  Seed color is another characteristic we study.  As fruit ripen, seeds gradually turn from white to white streaked with brown to solid brown.

One test we often use in commercial orchards is called the starch/iodine test.  Apples are cut in half and the cut surface sprayed with an iodine solution.  Iodine attaches to starch, but not sugar.  Since a key change in apples as they ripen is the conversion of starch to sugar (they get sweet!), we can determine just how ripe an apple is by how much starch (or black strained area on the cut surface) remains.

A starch-iodine test is often used to determine when apples are ready. Starch (stained black by the iodine) indicates it is not yet ready.     Photo: W.Lord

But in the end, we eat them.  And when they taste just right, we pick them.

Bill Lord, August 19, 2009

Summer in the orchard is a time when you can find a lot of action if you look closely.  Aphids have been feeding on tender leaves near the tips of rapidly growing shoots.  But these aphids are not alone.  Predators show up soon after the aphids, eating so many that just as you might think we need to do something to control these pests, they seemingly disappear.

These hungry orange Cecidomyiidae gobble up unsuspecting aphids on an apple leaf in a New Hampshire orchard recently. Photo: W.Lord

Apples are growing rapidly – all the rain that has made disease management a bear and waterlogged home gardens is helping insure our apples will be large.  Early varieties like Ginger Gold and Paulared offer the promise of large, flavorful fruits as September rolls in.

Early peaches are ready.  Enough said!

Bill Lord, July 21, 2009

Rain and clouds have dominated over the past two weeks.  There have been a couple of breaks but those breaks have been rare and short-lived.

How are our fruit crops surviving all this lowery weather?

Surprisingly well!  We have a nice crop of apples, one that will size up well given the ample amounts of water available.  And our strawberry crop, picked between showers, is the best I have ever seen.  A few blueberries and raspberries are ready and sweet cherries, just hitting their peak, are simply delectable.

One interesting pest of apple I ran into last week was a Prionus rootborer.  A grower was losing a few 4 or 5 year old trees.  These trees had leafed out, but were not growing and leaves were small and yellow.  It seemed likely the problem was a root issue so we pulled up a couple of trees to see what was going on.  The trees were almost completely eaten off just a few inches below the ground and a critter was happily feasting on main stem of each just below ground.  These guys get big – this one was nearly 3 inches long and appeared to be well-fed.

This borer measured almost 3 inches in length and had killed a 5 year old apple tree. Photo: W.Lord

This is the bottom of the trunk just below ground. Check out the tunnel this one is making as it eats its way through the wood. Photo: W.Lord

How do we protect our young trees from this type of attack?

First, keep the area around trunks of young trees free of tall grasses and weeds.  Keeping vegetation short eliminates the cover the adults prefer for egg laying and allows natural predators like downy woodpeckers access to a meal.

Consider painting trunks of smooth barked young trees in particular with white latex paint. Repaint each year to provide a deterrent to egg laying adults.  This will also protect these young trees from winter injury caused by temperature fluctuations on clear, cold days in winter.

Use a barrier to keep adults away from trunks.  Aluminum screen fabric works well.  Wrap the trunk from the ground up to the first branch, tying off the top with twine and covering the bottom with soil.  Barriers should be applied by early May and removed in September.

Bill Lord, June 28, 2009

It is strawberry season! At long last, harvest is underway.

No, harvest is not later than normal this year; in fact, it is just about on time – but that first ripe strawberry for me is the first real proof that summer is indeed here. Of course, given the rain and gloom of the past few days, that may be hard to believe.  Even though the weather has been lowery, I have picked some berries – they were worth getting wet for.

What makes our New Hampshire strawberries so special?  Taste one and you will know! Our berries aren’t shipped thousands of miles so we (or you) are able to pick them perfectly ripe.  They are just so sweet.

Sweet New Hampshire strawberries ready for eating fresh or in a shortcake. Photo: W.Lord

Looking for a place to pick your own sweet, ripe, New Hampshire strawberries?  Follow this link to find a U-pick farm near you.  NH Harvest-Your-Own List

How do they grow?

Most strawberries we grow in NH are what we call ‘June Bearing’ or ’short day’ plants.  These plants produce a heavy crop of fruit starting in early to mid-June and lasting into very early July.   Floral initiation begins as days get shorter and cooler.  In New Hampshire that mean mid to late September until late autumn is the time of year our plants are initiating flower buds.  These flower buds initiated in the autumn will flower the following spring.

What do strawberry plants do during the long days of summer.  They grow.  Those long, warm days stimulate the plants to produce runners – horizontal stems called stolons that develop from buds in the axils of leaves on the crown.  Each runner  produces a new strawberry crown at its tip.

So we plant in early spring.  Plants grow and multiply during the summer.  We remove excess runners, keep beds weed free, and mulch with straw or pine needles in late November to protect our plants over winter.

Mulch is removed in April, and plants respond to the warmth of spring with the growth of new leaves, flowering, and fruit production.

After harvest, we get physical with our plants. We start by mowing the foliage off an inch or two above the crowns.  We rototill deeply in the aisles, narrowing plant rows back to 12 to 16 inches.  Then we fertilize and irrigate.  Plants regrow quickly, producing new leaves and runners, and come fall, flower buds.  We mulch again in late November, and wait for the promise of ripe fruit again come spring.

Bill Lord

June 16, 2009

A sea of pinkish-white flowers, bees buzzing, then petal fall, then the wait – how many of those flowers will actually set apples.  If most of them set, the trees will never be able to handle the load.  If too few set, we will not meet market needs.

June drop.

We had great weather for setting fruit.  But fortunately, apple trees have a way of evening things out, especially if we give them a little help.  Most of the excess fruits on our apple trees have dropped or will soon, leaving us with just about the right number to insure good fruit size this year and, as importantly, enough energy left over to set flower buds for next year’s crop.

One pest that often causes unwanted June drop is the plum curculio. It has been active this year, especially in unmanaged trees, but its run for this year is thankfully about over.

This developing pear fruit has been a target for multiple egg laying efforts by plum curculio. If it does not drop, it will be severely deformed at harvest. Photo: W.Lord

Peaches often set far more fruit that the trees could ever handle. We hand thin peaches to insure good fruit size and quality.  Now is a great time to get started thinning peaches by hand.  Pick off the smaller ones or ones showing signs of insect damage.  As a general rule, a final spacing of 6-8 inches on average between peaches is ideal.

When you visit a farm to pick strawberries this month, you will see little if any evidence of the hard frosts that dogged growers during the bloom period.  That is because those growers spent several sleepless nights battling what several growers have characterized as the worst late frosts they have dealt with in over 40 years. Growers beat frost with water.  Sprinkler irrigation is turned on as temperatures drop near 32^oF and water is applied continuously until all the ice that forms as temperatures dip below freezing melts.  This can mean turning on the irrigation in the middle of the night and staying with it until well past dawn.

Sleep is not an option when the season’s crop is on the line.

Bill Lord, June 5, 2009

Now that bloom is past, our small apples and peaches are in period of rapid growth.  The cool, wet weather of the past 2 days has slowed them down, but we needed the rain and fruits should really start to pop once the weather warms.

Scattered frosts last week hurt some orchards, killing flowers as temperatures dipped to as low as 25^oF in some colder spots.  Frost damaged flowers often still look fine with white flower petals open wide, but bee activity ceases and a look inside what would normally become a fruit shows why.

This flower survived the frosty nights of last week. Photo: W.Lord

Unfortunately, this apple blossom was killed by frost. Photo: W.Lord

Most orchards have what looks like a great crop shaping up for fall – frost damaged flowers in just a few isolated plantings.

Bill Lord

May 28, 2009