stress on apples
from Heather
Does the same hold true for cider apples?
I ask because I could expand my folk's orchard, but there is a really high water table there, so I was thinking it wouldn't be ideal.
Heather
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now.
Andrew Lea
> I have heard that wine makers like to stress out the grapes. They make
> them work to get to water, and they do other methods to try and get the
> best tasting grapes.
>
> Does the same hold true for cider apples?
Yes - up to a point. The trick for most top fruits is to stress them
just enough that they perform to perfection (flavour-wise) but not so
much that they keel over. Works with people too. Or so I was always told
in the corporate world ("targets should be stretching but achievable").
Andrew
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk
Stephen Hayes
Provence-I observed apple orchards which were very tightly pruned and
irrigated by tubes. Believe it or not, increasingly the new 'concept'
orchards (1200 trees to the acre on post and wire systems) are also being
irrigated in Britain to get extreme levels of control and absolute maxiumum
cropping. You all know whjat these apples taste like though.
Hot dry climate + irrigation= lots of large attractive fruit, but I believe
we get better flavours without it. No apple loves drought, but in the hot
dry summer of 2003 we had a reduced crop of dessert apples, and they were
small, but flavour and sugar levels were high. No cider fruit to speak of
that year due to young trees and an off year.
Stephen
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Cornelius Traas
I agree with you, but only to an extent. These new orchard systems being
planted for hot locations (or in the UK), using irrigation, do have the
potential to produce tasteless apples, but need not necessarily do so. Two
other components that are much more fundamental than water are fertiliser
and over-cropping. If a tree (or an acre of trees) is over-cropped, perhaps
more than 20 tons of apples per acre, depending on variety, then excessive
fertiliser needs to be given to grow the crop on the tree, and help ensure
that the subsequent crop appears by reducing the risk of biennialism.
Experiments have shown that unstressed trees, grown under good management,
produce fruit of only slightly differing soluble solids up to a certain
yield, but that after that point, soluble solids drop off quite quickly with
increasing yield, as there are simply not enough sugars being produced by
the leaves to give fruit of adequate soluble solids content.
The possible reasons that under-cropped trees do not give fruit of higher
soluble solids than optimally cropped trees, is that the extra sugars
produced by the leaves are channelled to woody growth (stems, roots and new
shoots) rather than fruit growth, which may need to be pruned off, or in the
case of younger trees, helps them develop to full size.
Now I do concede that other components in the apple (or juice) are affected
by stress. So attacks of disease, drought, or perhaps even flooding, will
produce fruit with certain flavour components that can lead to more
interesting ciders (or wines), but the basic sugar and acid contents, which
is what people notice mostly when eating apples, are as likely to be
negatively affected by a scab outbreak, as positively.
Regarding irrigation, there are two sides to this. If we get a nice warm and
dry spell in June, and I go for a walk in my orchard, I will notice trees
under stress. The leaves will be wilting a little. Under the skin, the pores
of the leaves are closed, to conserve moisture, but because of that, the
leaves can't take in CO2. So the tree is sitting there doing no growing,
producing no sugars to feed itself and its apples, at the very moment when
growing conditions are ideal. And not only that, but a process called
photorespiration (an evolutionary relic it appears whereby oxygen
substitutes for CO2 in photosynthesis), actually uses up any built-up
reserves, with no contribution to the tree or fruits at all. Now as a
grower, I feel I have a duty to get my trees to produce at their optimum,
and this sort of a situation in a nice warm dry spell is not in accordance
with that. So I feel that irrigation in such a situation is entirely
justified. Not to cause the tree to over-crop, but rather not to waste the
best of growing conditions sitting there at a standstill. Therefore, I would
argue that irrigation needs to be seen as a tool which can be used for good
or bad. Used wisely, I have no doubt that it can result in fruits of higher
sugar and acid contents than those from unirrigated trees. Used badly, it
can have the reverse effect.
Con Traas
The Apple Farm,
Moorstown, Cahir, Co. Tipperary.
Tel: 052 744 1459
Email: c...@theapplefarm.com
Web: www.theapplefarm.com
Stephen Hayes
I'm sure you're not wrong, but I find the apples I buy in teh shos are
pretty tastless and my customers all say the same. I am sure it is a
multiplicity of factors
wishing you and all the group a happy and succesful 2010
Stephen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cornelius Traas" <c...@theapplefarm.com>
To: <cider-w...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Cider Workshop] stress on apples
cider digest
Thanks for your impute on this topic from an orchardist point of view.
Your comments are most interesting and informative.
I have just started reading on orchard management and the book
( Intensive Orchard Management ) does not stress these points.
I had never realized the varied issues for tree health and good crops.
Could you give a opinion as to the best balance you have found for
tree size, rootstock
for your area and quantity of trees per acre with a spacing and row
configuration you have used.
Regards,
Carl
On Dec 31 2009, 7:01 am, "Cornelius Traas" <c...@theapplefarm.com>
wrote:
Cornelius Traas
size, rootstock for your area and quantity of trees per acre with a spacing
and row configuration you have used."
I'm now sorry that I answered to begin with. This is such a massive topic,
with so many variables.
To begin with, I grow almost all my trees on M9 rootstock. There are
differing M9's however, varying from the stronger EMLA9 (UK) to standard
NABK357 (Netherlands) to weaker Fleuren 56, which I personally like.
I have a heavy soil, which tends to grow strongly, once drought is not an
issue, so this weaker Fleuren 56 means that I could grow a Jonagold, Gala,
or Braeburn apple at about 1000 trees per acre. For stronger growing
varieties like Bramley or even Elstar, they could be planted with less per
acre, or with the graft union higher above the soil level to reduce vigour.
I have Kingston Black on M9 (David Llewellyn might know which rootstock
clone, as he propagated it for me), and it could be planted at 1000 trees
per acre, and would just have enough vigour in my situation to fill the
space... eventually.
Regarding spacing and row configuration, planting trees in single rows has
definite advantages from a management perspective. To get around 1000 trees
per acre requires rows of perhaps 3.25 metre centres, with trees at 1.25
metre spacings in rows. This would be for conventional trees growing to
about 2.2 metres tall. Concept orchards allow for taller trees, but rows are
spaced wider apart to reduce shading in these Northern latitudes (not so
vital once you get to latitudes below 45 degrees N or S, where mutual
shading is not an issue because the sun is at a higher angle in the sky).
I also have orchards planted in beds, which can be a little better yielding,
but require more exacting management in terms of pruning, fertilising,
thinning etc. Here I also aim for 1000 trees per acre, with three rows of
trees in each bed; trees at 1.75 x 2 m in the bed, and with 3.5m between
each bed to allow for vehicle access.
Unless for a very specific reason, to get maximum light interception and
consequently the best crop of quality fruit, trees need to be trained in a
Christmas-tree shape, having a leader and number of branch tiers (three is
typical), with the narrowest tier at the top, a medium tier in the middle,
and the widest tier at the base, about 80cm above the ground level. Larger
trees are always self-shading, because of the limited ability of light to
penetrate more than 60cm into a leaf canopy. Having large trees, or parts of
a smaller tree which are more than 60cm from the outside to the inside is
therefore completely pointless from a productive viewpoint, though it may
have merit if you are trying to develop a certain look or preserve a
traditional orchard, for instance.
I hope that these basics give a pointer. Remember that you may find that in
your area a different rootstock (stronger or weaker) may be needed to
produce trees of the size you desire. Local knowledge is always really
important. There are others on this list who I am sure also have something
to contribute on this.
Happy New Year
cideroz
post from Con below.
Firstly let me say I agree with the earlier posters that cider fruit
should not be pushed to the biggest and juiciest levels that are seen
for retail fruit.
When considering whether or not to have irrigation, it is as well to
consider some of the less obvious reasons in favour of having it.
In the early stages of fruit formation - ie post pollination - there
is a time of rapid cell division and it is at this stage that the
number of cells in a fruit are established. If the tree is stressed at
this stage then cell number is reduced and no amount of ideal growing
conditions later on can rectify this.
Similarly if you have a dry period somewhere during the life of the
crop that debilitates the fruit and the tree, that effect can impair
both the current crop and that of the following year.
Having an irrigation system in place makes it possible to mitigate
these various effects. The time before intervention and the degree of
mitigation is completely up to you. Yes you will have made a capital
investment, but perhaps it is better in cider terms to think of it as
an insurance policy. There is nothing that says you have to irrigate
just because the system is in place but it can be invaluable as a back-
up to avoid stress to you or the trees and fruit.
It is also interesting to do some searching regarding "deficit
irrigation" and consider the rationale behind this. Having soil
moisture monitoring equipment is desirable to employ this but not
essential.
--
David Pickering
"Linden Lea" Huntley Road, ORANGE NSW 2800 Australia
Dick Dunn
Pickering, I'll add my voice that there's no shame in irrigating as
needed; one should not withhold it on some imagined principle.
Perhaps it seems unlikely, or even a technique for encouraging over-
production, in the West Country. But in Ireland (Con), or Australia
(David) the climatic considerations are no doubt different. And here
in Colorado, the question about irrigation is not "whether" but "how
often?" Although our soil and general conditions are ideal for apples
(our region is notably similar to the area of Kazakhstan where the
modern apple supposedly originated) overall they are simply too arid
to get trees going and producing well without some irrigation help.
As David said,
...[problems from serious water stress]...
> Having an irrigation system in place makes it possible to mitigate
> these various effects. The time before intervention and the degree of
> mitigation is completely up to you. Yes you will have made a capital
> investment, but perhaps it is better in cider terms to think of it as
> an insurance policy. There is nothing that says you have to irrigate
> just because the system is in place but it can be invaluable as a back-
> up to avoid stress to you or the trees and fruit.
Take a page from those of us who -must- irrigate; have a plan at least,
if not a "system". For example, I flood-irrigate about half of my trees.
By having a small ditch in place, it takes no more than a pair of fabric
dams, about $10 apiece.
--
Dick Dunn rc...@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA