Fruit Grower’s Journal

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

It is always a guessing game right after bloom.  If every flower sets a fruit, we will have so many apples they will be quite small and trees will groan under the crop load.  And they will bear few if any fruit next year.  If our apple trees set too few apples, we will not have enough fruit to meet our market needs.

Apple blossoms have faded. The developing fruit with upturned sepals on the left will likely set while the one on the right will likely drop. Photo: W.Lord

Weather during bloom was generally pretty nice.  We had sunshine and warmish temperatures and bees were active in our trees.  It is likely we will have plenty of apples, probably too many.  To insure good tree health and fruit quality, we will thin the crop, removing excess fruits.  What we want is an apple every 6 to 8 inches or so and few if any doubles or triples.

Variety of the Week

Not many apple varieties have originated here in New Hampshire but one notable one that did is Hampshire Mac.  This apple was discovered as a chance seedling at Gould Hill Orchards in Contoocook.  Hampshire Mac ripens a couple of weeks after McIntosh, generally around October 1.  It is a brightly colored red, large apple that is very crisp with a clean, pleasant flavor.

Hampshire Mac is a crisp, flavorful native of the”Granite State”. Photo: W.Lord

One thing I like about Hampshire Mac is how the branches seem to naturally lay almost flat once it comes into production, making it an easy tree to train.

Bill Lord, May 18, 2009

What a a beautiful sight full bloom is.  Bees are busy buzzing from flower to flower, doing the necessary work of transferring pollen from the flowers of one variety to the flowers of a second.  The delicate, sweet smell of the blossoms is everywhere.

A native pollinator works an apple blossom in a Grafton County Orchard. Photo: W.Lord

We bring in honeybees to help pollinate our apple blossoms, but it is our native bees that do the heavy lifting, especially when the weather is windy and cool.  Their European cousins, honey bees, don’t seem to enjoy our cooler spring days.  Bees are not the only creatures that find our trees inviting.  Our pruning and training produces an abundance of wide-angled lateral branches that make great nesting sites for song  birds.

Bright blue robin’s eggs decorate an apple tree in a New Hampshire orchard.  Photo: W.Lord

Petal fall is already here in many orchards in southern New Hampshire and plum curculio is likely waiting in our trees ready to attack our newly forming apples and other tree fruits (UNHCE Curculio Fact Sheet). This is perhaps the most vexing pest we face.  It is only in the orchard for a few short weeks, yet it can wreak havoc on our crops, causing many fruits to drop in June and badly scarring those that survive.  There are no really good natural controls.  Research does offer hope that soon we may at least be able to lure some of these to a few trap trees strategically placed around our orchards.

Bill Lord, May 15, 2009