Aronia berry beginning to ripen
This week we’re continuing Ribes harvest, summer pruning, weeding and troubleshooting dreaded midsummer irrigation pump issues (which will hopefully be followed by ample watering of all orchard zones).
Fruit/Bud/Tree Development
- We’re coming to the end of bloom for pretty much all the grapes with earlier varieties rapidly sizing fruit. It’s been a strange year for our grapes, with the varieties we normally favor really struggling with blossom shatter/shot berry and varieties that often underperform looking to have excellent fruit set. We’ll be doing some cordon girdling on varieties that have nice clusters to encourage full ripening before fall rains begin.
- Our assorted small fruits are coming along nicely with aronia berries beginning to color up and kiwi berries looking to have a bumper crop come this October. Really nice sized bountiful kiwi fruit on the vines.
- Our June-bearing strawberries are due for their post-harvest rennovation where plants will be trimmed down to a couple inches to stimulate new growth and encourage runners to fill in gaps of the bed that would otherwise be occupied by weeds. This trimming will also be paired with applications of fertilizer.
A juvenile apple damaged by codling moth
Pest & Disease
- We’re beginning to see the first damage from codling moth larvae entering apples. We’ve been making weekly applications of organic insecticides to try to keep this tricky pest at bay but some damage to fruit is inevitable under our current pest management regimes. We will likely make at least one more application of the codling moth granulosis virus, a virus that specifically impacts this target pest and is intended to reduce pest pressure over time. Kaolin clay is also being used in the orchard to prevent apple maggot and further codling moth egg laying.
- Peaches are beginning to size and will start to soften over the next couple weeks. During this period, we apply sticky trunk wrap to prevent earwig nibbles on the peach fruit.
- Weekly preventative sprays are happening to control powderey mildew on grapes. This year has been great conditions for PM proliferation (look at any maples growing around the county for evidence of this disease pressure). We reference WSU’s grape powderey mildew index model (learn more at weather.wsu.edu) to determine our spray intervals for powdery mildew control.
What’s Ripe?
This week we’re harvesting: Currants, Gooseberries and Jostaberries. Methley plums are starting to turn purple with a handful of the earliest plums ripening. We will probably begin harvest on plums next week but there’s potential for a pick by the end of this week.
Methley plums entering the final stages of ripening
