Growers - Four Seasons of Growing Apples

The majority of apple orchards are family-run farm businesses, operated in cooperation with the laws of nature. This highly seasonal enterprise is as varied as the days in a year, with each day bringing a new chance to test the orchardist's skills against the measure of the eventual harvest. An apple orchard is a busy place.

Spring
	Pre-Bloom. The year can be thought of as a cycle. We will start the year in the orchard with spring, the season of rebirth. Brush, which has accumulated beneath the trees as a result of pruning, is raked into row centers and chopped or pushed into piles and burned. Fertilizer is spread underneath every tree according to leaf and soil analysis. New trees are planted. Scion wood from desirable varieties may be grafted to existing trees of less desirable varieties as a quick way of making the varietal change. April is the time to prepare for spring planting. The average tree will bear fruit in 3 years, with full production coming in 8-10 years. Since apples do not grow true to their seeds, young trees that have been grown in a nursery from cuttings are transplanted to the orchard site. These trees have a desired fruit variety grafted (attached by tissue splicing) on to a rootstock selected for characteristics of size and vigor. Sometime around the beginning of May, the buds begin to swell. Spring is near and the pace of the farm quickens. Grass that has grown tall is mowed to reduce competition for nutrients and habitat for pests. Growers using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) start monitoring the weather while hanging various insect traps to collect data for an annual spray program. Temperature, humidity and rainfall are recorded in orchard weather stations to predict disease outbreaks and identify effective management tools. Both harmful and beneficial insects are counted to determine spray schedules. Spraying is done only when needed to protect the tree and fruit.
	Bloom. Then comes bloom, the real beginning of the apple growing process and an event that excites the veteran grower and the novice alike. We depend upon bees to carry pollen from one flower to the next so that apples will develop. With most varieties pollen must come from a different variety in order to get a good fruit set. There are native bees and other insects flying during bloom, but in order to insure that we have adequate pollination, most apple grower's lease hives of bees from a beekeeper during bloom at the rate of approximately one hive per acre. In addition to an adequate number of bees, good pollination weather is necessary to have a good fruit set. The honeybee is particular and does not like to fly if the temperature is below 60 degrees or if it is very windy. Cold, rainy, or windy weather has kept many a good bloom from living up to its potential to produce a good crop.
Summer
	Post-Bloom  Apples should be spaced every four or five inches along a branch. Thinning is the solution. Thinning is usually accomplished by chemical means. There are a few chemicals that if applied shortly after bloom will cause a percentage of the little apples to drop from the tree. The difficult part of this process is the decision concerning how much to thin. Right after bloom it always looks as though almost every blossom cluster has produced five little apples. It hasn't, but it takes a few weeks to tell which are going to develop into apples and which are going to shrivel up and fall off. Therefore the decision to thin has to be made several weeks before one can really know how much thinning is needed. An educated guess is made based on the number of flowers, the weather and temperature during bloom and how active the bees were. If the educated guess wasn't quite right or if weather conditions weren't conducive to effective thinning, growers may hand thin in July when the apples are about an inch in diameter. Thinning also promotes return bloom. Many apple varieties have a tendency to produce an apple crop only every other year. Thinning counteracts this tendency. It is more desirable to have the strength of the tree go into growing a moderate amount of large apples than a large amount of small apples. A bushel of large apples may be worth twice what a bushel of small apples is worth, so that it matters a lot that too good a fruit set not be allowed to remain.
	Pest control starts in the spring and continues throughout the summer. During July and early August the orchard is mowed at least once, usually twice. It is a job like housecleaning, never ending and as soon as everything has been mowed once it is time to start over again. Weeds right under the trees are considered pests because they use water and nutrients needed by the trees, and they harbor insects harmful to the tree or fruit. They are particularly bad competition for young trees. Weeds are mostly kept under control by the use of herbicides, but other means are available such as under tree cultivation and mulches. A clean strip under the trees reduces rodent habitat. Fall/Harvest
	This starts in September and October. Experienced skilled workers are very important, because pickers make the difference between a bushel of apples fit only for processing and one graded as extra fancy that may sell for eight times more than processing apples. The intensity of the short harvest season is hard to imagine unless one has experienced it. The pickers work eight hours a day seven days a week during good weather, while the support crew works about 10 hours daily. This crew includes the foreman, quality checkers whose job it is to make sure that the apples are picked carefully and not prematurely before enough red color has developed; record keepers whose job it is to record the hours worked and the amount picked by each picker, and tractor drivers who move the apple bins through the orchards while they are being filled by the pickers. By the end of each days work all apples picked that day should be in refrigerated storage rooms being cooled. Prompt cooling after picking increases storage life. The first apples picked are put into special cold storage rooms, which are nearly airtight when sealed shut. These specially stored apples are destined to be marketed later in the year, from December on. The later picked apples, are riper and more flavorful but will not keep as well. Therefore they are marketed first and kept in refrigerated rooms that are not sealed. They are stored at 32F. These apples are referred to as cold storage or regular storage fruit. Grading, packing and shipping of apples goes on from a few weeks to 12 months depending on the size of the orchard and the manner of marketing the orchard uses. Growers usually have all or part of their crop stored and packed by a cooperative facility. After harvest there is still work to be done before winter arrives. Any equipment left in the orchard needs to be collected and put under cover. Sprayers and tractors that will not be used until next spring need to be made ready to withstand freezing temperatures and stored for the winter. Tree limbs broken by too heavy a fruit load need to be sawed off. One last mowing is done to keep the grass from providing too much cover to rodents. The main rodents that apple growers are concerned with are voles that will eat apple bark at or below ground level girdling a tree and thus killing it. Damage is limited by reducing their numbers by an application of poison bait after harvest, by trying to make the orchard habitat unattractive to them, and by protecting the tender bark of the trunks of young trees with guards of various types, and by cheering on the predators. We like foxes and coyotes.
Winter
	In January, while the trees are dormant, pruning begins. Limbs are sawed off and clipped to allow maximum sunlight into the growing structure. Pruning allows the tree to produce larger, better-colored, higher quality and more valuable fruit. Equipment repairs and maintenance occupies the days too cold or stormy to be outdoors, through the winter months of February and March. Winter is not a time for apple growers to take long vacations to southern climates, as many people seem to think. Apples are graded, packed, and marketed all winter as previously mentioned. The other major job done in the winter and early spring is pruning. Major cuts are made when the trees are dormant. Every tree should be pruned every year. Trees are pruned to renew fruiting wood, to let light into as much of the tree as possible, to encourage moderate vigor, and to maintain the tree at a convenient height and shape. The mad scramble to finish up pruning always seems to run right into the need to perform those jobs belonging to beginning of the growing season when the cycle starts again.