Notes from the Field: Week of August 19

The most beautiful peach plum you ever did see.

This week feels like we’re entering our more full-on harvest season – peach, plum, apple and pear varieties are ready for picking, and we’re ~2 weeks out on our first grape varieties. This cooling down of temperatures recently (along with some precipitation) has us all a little anxious about having enough heat this late summer/fall to ripen some of our more heat-loving crops (doubtful that we’ll have any persimmons or Neptune grapes this year…), but the added precipitation and milder temps have been doing wonders for overall plant health and fruit sizing it seems on many crops. We’ll be doing some fertility spray applications this week for pome and ribes, as well as trying to tackle some increased borer activity on apple, peach and plum trunks in particular with an organic insecticide application.

Fruit/Bud/Tree Development

Akane apples under netting appear, at least at first glance, pretty clean, and are very well colored this year. Reduced tree vigor and thus less shade, as well as the effect of the sun reflection provided by the netting are likely factors. This variety also remains small for longer than other early varieties like Zestar and Grav and thus may have been less appealing to early codling moth.
We did a summer prune on pears – and particularly Asian pears – last week in an effort to remove some of the water sprouts and allow for better spray penetration, more even ripening, better air flow, and ease of harvest on these un-netted pears. They look much more open now and we hope we can continue to keep them clean.
Cornelian cherries (while a light fruit set this year) are looking large and like they’ll be ready for picking in about a week.
Peach plums are ready for picking, but we only have a handful of fruit (which will be a welcome treat for staff). We LOVE this fruit, but the trees remain too difficult to get a reliable crop off of, unfortunately.
Grapes are turning color (Lynden Blue are starting to darken and develop seeds) and we expect to be picking our first varieties in a little less than 2 weeks.

Pest & Disease

Noticed some bright red spotting on an Akane apple in our front high-density planting. Not sure exactly what the culprit is just yet – almost looks like scale but I don’t see any actual scale.
Our bosc pears (a notoriously pear scab-prone variety for us out here) are remarkably clean looking this year, and I think a more thorough pruning this winter helped us out there. Pear scab pressure in general appears somewhat lower this season (weather and effective antifungals may be the reason).