Winter finally came again in mid-January, and we had reasonable snow fall through February and into mid-March, during which came in the form of sporadic snowstorms. Snow cover is consistently over, and while it's still cool in the evenings, we've had considerable bouts of warm temperatures often exceeding 60F. In the Hudson Valley and Long Island, green tip is presently happening or imminent. The rest of the production areas in NY may still have a week or more before bud break. While we've had some bursts of warm weather and in the coming week, there are cooler days forecasted for the week, which could slow tree development. Overall, the season will be upon us shortly, and we need to consider early season management for apple scab. In 2021, there was a decent amount of rainfall in early to mid-April, but little in May to June, which was characterized by sporadic, but hot (>75F) heavy thunderstorms and July more so. Still with the drought from 2020 and the lack of rain from tight cluster to petal fall, my unsprayed trees of several different cultivars had only moderate levels of apple scab. Not surprisingly, there were no reports of apple scab control failures in commercial orchards anywhere in NY.

Bitter pit in Honeycrisp is affected by tree vigor which in turn is affected by both pruning and fertilization levels. Thus, to achieve a balance between vigor and fruit quality we must manage both pruning and fertilization in a coordinated manner. When deciding how severely to prune a Honeycrisp tree, we should consider flower bud number per tree and also leaf nutrient levels and the peel sap nutrient values, which we have been collecting statewide over the last 2 summers.

As a follow up to our soil health session at the 2022 Cornell Tree Fruit Conference, I thought I would briefly discuss what I consider to be some of the key characteristics of a high-quality orchard soil. I think a good way to think about this is by thinking through what some of the key functions of an orchard soil are.

During our winter fruit conference program in February 2020, just prior to covid shutting down our in-person meetings, Mike Basedow and I devoted the entire second day to the question of "What apple variety should I plant?". After a full day of listening to growers, marketers, nursery producers, and academics tackle the question from different angles, the path towards future success remained fuzzy at best. The question has remained foremost in the minds of our Eastern New York producers and the answer continues to elude us. Today, for the first time in many years, nurseries have trees available for purchase without prior contracts and many producers have slowed or even delayed their replanting plans. With establishment costs heading north of 25K $$$ per acre and faced with the task of top-working young blocks of the last, but now past, new variety star to more reliable options begs the question: "What variety do I plant" or perhaps more telling, "should I be planting anything at all?"

Many growers in the US have been focused on predicted herbicide shortages in the upcoming field season. While the primary concerns have surrounded glyphosate and glufosinate, there is increasing apprehension that active ingredients of importance to tree fruit and small fruit growers may also be affected. Although the supply change is dynamic, chemical stocks may become, and remain, tight at the local or regional level as growers try to fill gaps in their toolboxes. As spring residual herbicides are soon to be applied, please consider the following when planning for the 2022 season.

Choices, the American Agricultural Economic Association's policy-oriented journal, featured the fruit and tree-nut sectors in their 2nd quarter issue in 2021. Two articles, Challenges for the US Fruit Industry: Trends in Production, Consolidation and Competition by William Ridley and Stephen Devadoss and Economic Issues Related to Long-Term Investment in Tree Fruits by Reetwika Baasu and R. Karina Gallardo are particularly relevant to the NYS tree fruit industry.

An example output from a soil health assessment from the Cornell Soil Health Laboratory.

The first pest control applications in tree fruit usually consist of oil and copper sprays. These are long standing standard recommendations that are not without special considerations. Oil is generally recommended at rates of 2%, or 2 gals. per 100 gallons of water for dormant applications. Traditionally this has translated to 4 gallons of oil per acre for stone fruit based on a dilute volume of 200 gallons per acre: the amount generally considered to cover a mature peach tree to the point of drip. For pome fruit the recommendation has been 6 gallons of oil per acre based on a dilute volume of 300 gallons per acre: the amount generally considered to cover a mature semi dwarf apple to the point of drip. The use limitations and application rates vary by product and growth stage so be sure to read and adhere to the product label.

This article is a "meat and potatoes" summary of an American Society of Horticultural Science (ASHS) Postharvest Group webinar I presented on January 18, 2022.  The webinar audience was a mix of research, extension, and commercial industry fruit workers from North America and Europe. As such, it was necessary to introduce the NYS apple industry, the Hudson Valley in particular, the Honeycrisp (HC) apple, and an overview of the 6-years of results from a Honeycrisp bitter pit (BP) research project for the most part conducted in the Hudson and Champlain valleys.  Since our CCE-ENYCHP Produce Pages readers have seen much of this data presented at fruit schools and in previous articles, I'm going to focus on specific recommendations that you can implement for the 2022 growing season.  

Two years of bio-remediation with rotation crops during the establishment of demonstration apple plots suppressed nematodes and improved soil health.  The pre-plant bio-remediation practices were evaluated and Dagger nematodes were decreased to the zer- tolerance level, and several soil health indicators were improved. Tree growth and fruit yield in the treatment plots were also higher than in control plots.

Hick's Orchard is located in Granville, NY just a few miles from the Vermont border.  The slate industry may have first put this little village on the map, but Hick's Orchard is what many people think of when they hear Granville.  The orchard opened their gates to U-Pick in 1905 and is recognized as the oldest U-Pick farm in New York State.  In its 117 years of operation, the 350-acre farm has been owned and operated by just two families.  The Wilson family currently owns Hicks Orchard and Dan Wilson is the 2^nd generation of the Wilson family to work towards the farm's mission, 'Grow Food to Build Community'.

The data presented in Figure 1 are from 19 Hudson Valley (HV) M.9 clone, M.26 and Bud.9 blocks that have been monitored annually since 2016. Blue bars represent observed bitter pit (BP), red bars represent EMR (Environment, Mineral profile, and Rootstock model) predicted values. In this "view from 10,000 feet", the EMR model has been reasonably accurate in predicting the HV BP trend in five of the six seasons, while over-predicting BP in 2018. As a practical matter, for a prediction model to be useful it must emphasize accuracy in the range of 0-20% BP incidence.  

While scab was relatively light in 2021 throughout much of the Eastern NY region, there may be some problem blocks here and there that would benefit from inoculum reduction strategies this fall. The objective of inoculum reduction is to eliminate a large proportion of the ascospores that would otherwise be produced in overwintering leaves. Fungicides applied next spring will be more effective when applied in these reduced inoculum orchards. 

2021 FGRM Measurement Template

Precision Chemical Thinning in 2021 for Gala and Honeycrisp

2020 fire blight season recap. In 2020, there were devastating fire blight outbreaks in NY and much of New England. The season was characterized by hot dry weather from the end of bloom into petal fall, which were the perfect conditions for systemic shoot blight. In the second half of May many sites experienced extreme risk for fire blight when bloom was apparently over and rainfall, dew, and humidity were scarce. Many growers were mystified with the subsequent outbreaks of shoot blight and perplexed as to how blossom infections could occur with the lack of moisture during high-risk periods. This is a common occurrence in the pacific northwest where fire blight devastates apple production despite a dry climate. Indeed, it may take only the slightest bit of internal canopy humidity or water from a nutritional or fungicide application to start an epidemic in exceptionally warm weather. We should remain cautious with vigorous growth during warm weather in the 2021 season, particularly as we approach petal fall and as shoots elongate. 

Early is where it's at:  Individual Honeycrisp fruits analyzed for mineral content around the end of the cell division period of fruit development (+40 mm) have been found to be highly variable in mineral content, particularly calcium.  Four years of research results in the Hudson Valley show that early season fruit calcium content can vary as much as 4.2X from a low Ca fruit to a high Ca fruit (figure 1).  These finding suggest that our calcium troubles start early in the growing season and therefore should be addressed early as well.  The calcium cation is not very mobile with plant tissue and doesn't move from cells with a surplus to cells in deficit.  Calcium cations need to be available for cell walls and membranes locally, and when needed.  Too far away and/or too late is of little help. Since calcium plays a role within the plant in hormonal signaling, the cations cannot remain "free" within cell cytoplasm or within the spaces between cells and cell walls.  Free calcium cations that are not incorporated promptly into cell membranes, cell walls, and endoplasmic reticulum are quickly deactivated and made unavailable through sequestration within cell vacuoles.

The 2021 Honeycrisp Playbook: Apogee (Prohexadione calcium) at Pink for Bitter Pit Suppression.

Daniel Donahue, CCE-ENYCHP, Hudson Valley New York

"Effective Bitter Pit suppression in Honeycrisp involves the deployment of a number of tactics over the course of the growing season, there is no silver bullet, no trick play to save the game, think of it like following a playbook in football, three yards and a cloud of dust."

Use this tool to look up the efficacy of herbicides to control common orchard weeds.

This table shows the optimal maturity indices for several apple varieties.

Starch index chart for SnapDragon (NY-1) apples

This is a presentation by Dr. Srdjan Acimovic of the Hudson Valley Research Lab. In this webinar, Dr. Acimovic discusses the biology and management of summer diseases of apples. Topics covered include bitter rot, Marssonina blotch, sooty blotch/flyspeck, and more.

Fill out this form when sending fire blight samples.

Perennial weeds can be particularly difficult to manage in the apple orchard. These plants are defined as being able to live for more than two years, which is due to their abilities to produce large root systems or other underground storage structures, such as bulbs, tubers, and rhizomes. These structures facilitate the spread of perennials in orchards, although many species also produce seed that support dispersal.

Sprayers must be regularly checked over to ensure that proper maintenance has been carried out and that no outstanding repairs need to be done. Faulty sprayers contribute to increased drift levels and waste money through inefficiency and overuse of chemicals.

Precision pruning is the first step in precision crop load management. This video covers the basics of how to prune your tall spindle apple orchard to reduce the bud load on your trees.

CCE ENYCHP vegetable specialist Daniel Donahue was recently interviewed by Good Fruit Grower at the Washington State Tree Fruit Association's Annual Meeting in Wenatchee, WA.  

Dan discusses bitter pit suppression and Cornell's Apogee trials in this Good Fruit Grower interview.

Visit the following link to view the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC6z1a7MF9k

This webinar will show you how to prune and renovate old, unmanaged apple trees.

The Malusim app allows you to enter spray records, use the fruit growth rate model, the carbohydrate thinning model, and the irrigation model.  The tool uses the Cornell evapotranspiration model and weather data off your station to determine how much irrigation is needed for each block.

Kerik Cox's lab will be conducting a fire blight survey again this year, investigating streptomycin resistance and strain distribution across NY State and New England.

Presentations from the 2019 ENYCHP Eastern New York Fruit & Vegetable Conference held February 19-21 for the tree fruit sections.

Cold injury is a concern for apple production in Eastern New York, where extremely cold mid-winter temperatures and dramatic temperature fluctuations in the late fall and early spring are not uncommon.  Let's review the types of cold damage we might expect to see in rootstock tissues, and discuss which rootstocks might be most appropriate for dealing with the cold in a high density production system.  

These videos describe two different methods for grafting apple trees.

It's looking like a difficult storage year for Hudson Valley Honeycrisp Producers

Reports are starting to filter in of excessive Honeycrisp cullage out of storage this season.  The predominant defect reported is bitter pit, a surprise to some following observations that this season's crop appeared relatively clean at harvest.  Our ENYCHP tree fruit team is currently in the 3rd year of our comprehensive Honeycrisp/Bitter Pit survey study, and our results to date shed some light on how 2018 compares to '16 and '17. 

During the 2018 growing season, we maintained an IPM trapping network in Northern New York, ranging from Chazy in Northern Clinton County to Rexford in Southern Saratoga County.  From May through mid-September, we sent weekly e-alerts of our trap counts for oriental fruit moth, codling moth, obliquebanded leafroller, and apple maggot.  Now that harvest is winding down, I would like to review this season's pest trends, and discuss what we observed from our hail netting trials in the Champlain Valley.

Excessive rain in New York and the rest of the Eastern US experienced in the second half of both the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons favored the development of Marssonina Leaf Blotch (MLB), a disease caused by Marssonina coronaria (sexual stage Diplocarpon mali). In early September 2017, in the lower-Hudson Valley and south NY we found MLB late in the summer in more than several apple orchards on Mutsu, Honeycrisp, NY-1 (SnapDragon), NY-2 (RubyFrost), Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Pristine, Grimes Golden, Northern Spy, Stayman Winesap, Tompkins King, and others. The alarming outcome was defoliation of lower part of the tree crowns, especially where moisture due to heavy dew or sprinkler irrigation was present up until midday.

As we jump into another harvest season, let's review some storage suggestions from Dr. Chris Watkins, and results from our own observations and research in Eastern New York, for some of our major cultivars. 

Apple growers in New York are starting to see a new crop insurance option in some counties, Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO). I had a couple of questions about it in Ulster County last fall. Now that we are nearing time to sign up for crop insurance again, let's dig in a little deeper - what is SCO and why might you consider it?

Near the end of the June, I attended the summer PGR meeting and orchard tour that was held in Geneva, where Dr. Poliana Francescatto reviewed some of her recent work with PGR's. After a detailed discussion of floral bud induction and initiation indoors, we headed out to the research orchard to view a handful of her current field trials.  In this article, we will review some of the key takeaways from that tour. 

Recommendations for Harvest Management Plant Growth Regulators in Eastern New York for 2018

Dan Donahue & Mike Basedow, CCE-ENYCHP

As we enter the warm summer months, you might consider trialing the precision irrigation model on your farm to improve tree growth in your new plantings and maximize fruit size in your mature blocks.

Increasingly tree fruit growers in NYS are looking at hail netting as a tool for reducing the impact of hail in their orchards.  Hail netting is already widespread in Australia, Europe and is increasing in popularity in Washington State.   Netting is used in those places, not only to protect the fruit from hail, but also from sun damage, and insect/pest damage and to increase the quality of the fruit crop.  While hail netting seems to have promise, the growing conditions for tree fruit in New York are not the same as Australia, Europe and Washington.  The Cornell Cooperative Extension Lake Ontario Fruit Team has recently received a grant to study hail netting in New York and its impact on pests and disease, yields, and quality of the fruit and to better understand the costs and labor needs for managing a hail netting system in a New York orchard.

Last week while we were nearing petal fall in the Champlain Valley, a grower and I were discussing when he ought to take his honey bees out of the orchard, which led us to discussing the role wild bees are playing in his orchard. These wild bees help pollinate our crop every year, so I think it is worth reviewing some of the different kinds of bees we can expect to see at bloom, and what we can do to encourage their visits. 

Cornell Extension Specialists are being asked with increasing frequency to investigate both chronic decline and rapid collapse of apple trees in young, high-density plantings in all regions of New York State.  Symptoms of chronic decline can include poor growth, off color foliage, and a generally unthrifty appearance that worsens over several years.  The death of an (apparently) previously healthy tree over the course of just a few weeks has been termed Rapid Apple Decline (RAD).  While the symptoms of chronic decline are subtler in some cases, RAD is eye-catching.  Afflicted trees appear to "burn up" mid-summer after having set and sized a normal crop load.  RAD may be a subset of the chronic decline condition or a completely different problem; causation is unknown at this time.

Dr. Poliana Francescatto (Cornell NYSAES), Win Cowgill, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers and Owner of Win Enterprises International, LLC Consulting, and Dan Donahue, CCE-ENYCHP

Dr. Poliana Francescatto (Cornell NYSAES) & Win Cowgill, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers and Owner of Win Enterprises International, LLC Consulting

Spray Mixing Instructions Considering Tree Row Volume

Terence Robinson and Poliana Francescatto

Cornell University

Win Cowgill

Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University

Tree fruit producers generate substantial quantities of empty pesticide containers over the course of the growing season.  Back in the "old days", paper bags found their way into a burn barrel, and plastic jugs into a landfill.  Neither option is viable today, so what to do?  Landfall disposal is still an option for some types of pesticide containers, and recycling is available for others, but first, here's what's legal in New York State.

Early weed control is a critical component of establishing a new planting. Newly planted fruit trees compete poorly against fast growing weeds for water and nutrients. This competition can severely limit a new block's growth, which can ultimately reduce potential yields in the third year by 50 percent. Weeds also harbor insects and diseases, provide habitat for rodents, and can serve as hosts for viruses, further complicating effective orchard management.

The early ‘worm' complex found in commercial apple during the pre-bloom period begins with the emergence of the speckled green fruit worm (SGFW).

On behalf of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, this article presents information on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule and answers frequently-asked questions from producers.

ENYCHP hosted a NEWA training workshop in Voorheesville in April 2018. Here are some of the main takeaways from the training.