Nearly ripe Akane apples
This week we’re picking peaches, apples, pears and eagerly monitoring Lynden Blue grapes for ripeness. We’ll also be prepping our apple line for the first big apple washing of the season, cleaning up apple drops to reduce pest pressure and spraying some organic fungicides to keep our trees healthy following this summer rain.
Fruit/Bud/Tree Development
- The vast majority of our table grapes varieties have reached “veraison” or the final stage of ripening when color begins to show on the grapes. We’re still a few weeks out from picking most grapes (the cool weather is slowing them down quite a bit).
- Rhubarb, a new crop for us this year (first harvest coming 2025), is beginning to establish nicely with large stalks and foliage helping our crowns set down nice roots for next years crop.
Pest & Disease
- Summer rains bring lots of moisture followed by warm temps which encourages fungal infection in many of our crops. Secondary apple scab, brown rot, and assorted fungal cankers to name a few. We’re applying some light organic fungicides (bicarbonate based products) to clean up proliferating fungal spores as well as products that induce resistance to fungal infection in plant tissues (Regalia).
- Though it may seem counterintuitive, summer rain saves us some energy when it comes to powderey mildew management, soaking with water washes away much of the powderey mildew innoculum.
- A final note on summer rain is that a sudden flush of a high volume of water can cause undesirable splitting on nearly ripe fruit. This is a concern we will be monitoring in the grapes and I observed some plums today which had split just before being ready to pick. This is one of the many forces in the orchard beyond our control.
A plum whose skin has split open likely due to a sudden increase in moisture.
Candice grapes at veraison
Lush growth in our new Rhubarb planting
