Methley plums ready for picking.
This week we’re feeling grateful for a slight cool off in temperatures as we try to regain our footing with canopy management, summer pruning, and weed management amongst a sea of other field tasks. We’re harvesting plums and finishing harvest on ribes this week, and spraying pome for codling moth and grapes for mildew prevention.
Fruit/Bud/Tree Development
- Fruit is sizing very quickly on pome and table grapes. Early apple variety Zestar and early pear variety Ubileen are at about ¾ of final size.
- After getting a nice hair cut last week (aka weedwhack trim), the June-bearing strawberries are already looking decent and should fill in their beds with new growth on runners with some added fertigation later this week.
- Table grape foliage is looking much healthier now across most varieties, although fruit set quality varies dramatically between cultivars.
Pest & Disease
- Codling moth entry holes are being observed on apples, particularly in the upper canopy of the trees. We continue to manage for this pest with approx. weekly organic insecticide applications.
- Apple scab is present, but not terrible this year. Susceptible varieties like Jonagold and Zestar have some scabby apples, but surprisingly another very-susceptible variety – Motts Pink – is almost clean at this point.
- We’ll be removing earwig “traps” from our peaches shortly and moving those earwigs to pome blocks. We’ll also be wrapping sticky trunk wrap around the base of each peach tree to try to capture and exclude earwigs from the peach tree canopies as fruit begins to size and ripen.
An example of bad apple scab infection on a susceptible variety leading to cracking, sunburn, and rot.
An Ubileen pear sizing up quickly.
What’s Ripe?
This week we’re harvesting: Currants (red) and Gooseberries (red), and Plums (Methley and Early Laxton).
