Notes from the Field: Week of September 16

A bosc pear and an Elstar apple.

This week we’ll be scavenging what rest of the grapes we can before the rains come in earnest this coming weekend/next week, and harvesting lots of apples and pears! Noting looking back at our records from previous years how this year while crops like peaches and grapes were late to ripen, apples and pears are nearly right on track with last year. Harvests of apples and pears from under the nets have us feeling positive about the results for apple maggot exclusion this season, and we’re seeing better pack-out percentages already. This week most of our team’s time will be spent harvesting, washing and packing fruit, mowing, and preparing for/hosting our second Tasting Event of the year on Thursday of this week!

Fruit/Bud/Tree Development

Apples are well-sized this year with the added rain we’ve got in the past month or so, and are ripening right on schedule with last year despite less overall heat.
We have our first kiwi berries softening and ripening – 74-49 variety – and seeing a few of these drop.
Quince are beginning to turn yellow-ish. We’ll probably be picking quince in 2-3 weeks.

Pest & Disease

Pear trellis rust continues to pop out at us. You can now see on the underside of the leaf the protrusions that lend the rust it’s name – they look like little stalagmites or “trellis posts”.
Botrytis is worse in the grapes than we’ve seen in the last couple years, likely due to all this wet weather. We try to remove as much of the rotten/molded/fungal-bodied covered clusters from the field entirely as we can to reduce innoculum.
It’s the season for spiders in the orchard and we’ve got lots of them! Always a welcome presence for some added fly control.

What’s Ripe?

This week we’re harvesting:

Apples (Honeycrisp, Elstar, Initial, Crimson Crisp, possibly Freedom, Fuji…)
Pears (Chojuro, Nijiseiki, Mishirasu, Manon, Hortensia, Seckel, possibly Armida)
Grapes (Lynden Blue, possibly Glenora, Reliance)