This week started off CHILLY with a low in the 30s overnight here in Everson on Sunday night and a slight dew frost on the grass this Monday morning on parts of the farm. Autumn is surely here and the harvests prove that to be the case – we’ll be busy picking apples and pears this week, and even harvesting some quince and kiwi berries as well. We’re also just beginning to prep for the end of the season – removing and rolling up nets for storage as we finish harvests on apple/pear/grape rows, cleaning up drops in the understory, and getting in a few last rounds of mowing and weedwhacking before the wet and cold comes for good.
Fruit/Bud/Tree Development
- As leaves start to turn and drop on grape vines, obvious differences in health of the vines become very apparent and we can see a marked difference in our vines based on soil type – the Lynden Blue vines planted on soil fill brought in after the pipeline dig many years ago drop their leaves earliest as compared to the same variety vines just 20 feet down the row where the topsoil was left undisturbed.
- Speaking of Lynden Blue, we may eek out a very small last pick on Lynden Blue this year of the berries we left from earlier that weren’t yet ripened (we had berries at all stages this year due to wind damage on canes early and uneven flowering).
A beautiful Crimson Crisp apple.
Apple and pear varieties ready for ripeness testing…
Pest & Disease
- We had an excellent harvest and pack-out on Crimson Crisp apples this year. The combination of a scab-immune variety, plus being under nets this season and thus preventing apple maggot damage meant we had a roughly 85-90% pack-out rate, which is very promising.
- We will be cutting down a few trees and vines in the coming weeks that have partially succumbed to crown rot/borers/fungal pressure. After 5 season here and observing different table grape varieties, I’m also feeling ready to pull the plug on a few grape variety trials that just haven’t produced well – Saturn, Joy, Hope, Gratitude, Glenora, Neptune, and Mars are all potentials for the chopping block after this season.
What’s Ripe?
- This week we’re harvesting: apples (Crimson Gold, Ashmead’s Kernel, Cosmic Crisp, Spartan, Creston, Fiesta, Honeycrisp, Grimes Golden, etc.), pears (Chojuro, Abbe Fetel, Conference, Comice, Armida), kiwi berries, and the first quince.
I would like information about the nets you used when you wrote: “plus being under nets this season and thus preventing apple maggot damage”. My apples in Sedro-Woolley have suffered from apple maggots for several years, forcing me to wrap nylon booties around the apples I wanted to save. My dwarf Honeycrisp would be a good candidate for a net.
This was the first season we have used insect netting for codling moth and apple maggot control on pome fruits in our orchards. We used DrapeNets Hail Nets, which is often referred to as insect netting, or bee netting. Cloud Mountain does sell custom lengths of the commercial bug netting for pickup. Make sure you put the netting up after bloom so pollination can occur. It is easiest to apply and remove the netting to trees trained as a fruiting wall, or to build a structure to support the nets.