Sustainable Apples

On this pleasant September day, I sit on my back deck amid the sweet scents of newly mown grass and ripening apples, knowing the dreaded orchard pruning and spraying time is fast approaching. With seven large, 30+ year old apple trees I have my work cut out for me, but if either activity is skipped, the fruit the next year are tiny and full of scab and worms. I use manual loppers to prune the trees but it seems the more I cut off, the more they grow back even though I am careful to only prune in the autumn. The spray I use is a mixture of dormant oil and sulfur. Am I damaging the environment by using these compounds? Are there biological controls I could use? Just what makes an apple ‘organically grown’, anyway?

Growing organic apples starts with the soil. Your soil pH should be between 6.3 and 6.8. If it’s acidic(low pH) you can use either a ground limestone or powdered oyster shell to raise soil pH. At http://www.gardensimply.com/ph_raise.shtml you will find a chart to simplify calculating how much to use. If your soil is alkaline (high pH) you can use compost to lower the pH. If the pH tests within that range and if a soil test shows that soil calcium is low, apply gypsum to prevent bitter pit. Spread a few inches of good compost within the tree’s drip line (inside the area on the ground covered by its branches and leaves) in late fall or early spring. Exciting work has been done to study utilization of municipal waste biosolids as compost for high density orchards (http://www.compost.org/cccOrganicComposts.htm)

Scatter ground limestone over the fallen leaves under the trees once harvesting is finished, and cover it with a layer of compost to hinder scab spore reproduction.

Select some trees and hang a series of insect traps that use pheromone lures or visual and/or scent mimicry to attract specific pests to keep tabs on pest populations.

Control both scab and powdery mildew with sprays of sulfur. In my orchard, I use liquid sulfur mixed with a spray adhesive such as Safers Soap or NuFilm 17, made of pine resin. Sulfur is an ancient and safe pesticide but can irritate your eyes, ears, and nose.
There are biological sprays to control powdery mildew and scab such as liquid sulfur mixed with a spray adhesive such as Safer’s Soap or NuFilm 17. Chelates from natural sources, such as citric acid, are acceptable in organic gardening use as a soil drench to combat soil borne fungi. These still seemed to be resorting to a pesticide to me and sulfur is an irritant of the nose, eyes and ears. And saying it is an irritant to my nose just doesn’t do it justice – this stuff really, truly stinks! So, it’s back to the drawing board to further flesh out my organic apple growing plan.

At www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00062.asp there is an interesting article about bagging the fruit to keep it insect and disease free. You do it at about when it's 3/4 to 1 inch in diameter, which is generally 35 to 40 days after the blossoms drop. The idea is to enclose the fruit in brown paper bags to keep insect pests from getting at them. It seems that the paper bags may not be the friendliest to the Earth, so I think I’ll try the same concept but with hemp fabric or burlap for more reuse. Doing this is possible if I use espaliered apples but may not be so practical for those legacy behemoths of mine.

Scattering ground cover designed to attract beneficial insects within my orchard sounds pretty interesting! I can use tall plants provide nectar and pollen for predatory wasps and hover flies, and low plants give lacewings an egg laying place and offer ground beetles a hiding place. And the added benefit is it looks darn good!

I found that there are many varieties of apples that are inherently disease resistant, and many that are also considered dwarf. You have to have at least two different arieties that bloom at the same time for pollination, and ideally, you want a mixture of ripening times so you have apples all season.

I’m starting to have visions of tiny, espaliered (trained to a compact and trained xshape that is easy to maintain and pick fruit from) apple trees that never need spraying, sporting bagged fruit, and leaving the birds and bunnies the spoils from the legacy trees.

This winter I’ll be searching for my new disease and insect resistant apple trees, and composting like crazy to be ready to amend the soil for my new, tiny tree orchard planting this coming spring! Not to mention making little cloth bags to safeguard all that luscious fruit I’ll be eating in a few years, and planning the other plants that I will put in for the beneficial insects.

Footnote: In researching for this posting I realized that many products, seemingly ‘organic’ are not being evaluated in terms of their total environmental and human cost, just in the sense of how it will affect the place where you apply or use it, for example kelp, and peat moss. But this kind of thinking is no longer enough. We must examine all of our choices in light of how the products used are created/extracted, and know who is impacted by our choices. We must support ethical, sustainable production in every manner possible, and we must start today.

Trillium

Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted; only when the last fish is caught; only then will they realize that you cannot eat money. Cree Proverb