Season 7, Episode 11 - Peach Harvest in Waves

Shan walks through early peach varieties nearing harvest and two distinct fruit size classes that may ripen a week or two apart. Kari digs into summer rot season.

Host: Don Seifrit
Speakers: Kari Peter, Shan Kumar

Photo Credit: J. Harper, PSU

Music Credit: “The Raven and the Swan” by Josh Woodward is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License. Courtesy of FreeMusicArchive.org

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Flight Seasonalities of Main Fruit Pests During the Growing Season

Transcript

Welcome And Quick Season Check

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Alright, welcome back once again, everybody. I'm Don Seaford. It's the Dr. Tree Fruit and Don podcast. It is Thursday, June 18th, and I am here with Dr. Carrie Peter. Say hi, Carrie.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hi there.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

And Dr.

Early Peaches And Split Ripening

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Sean Kumar, say hi, Sean. Hello, everyone. Alright, uh, it should be a pretty quick episode today, I think. Uh Sean, if you want to get us rolling first, go right ahead.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Sure. Uh thanks, Don and Carrie, for having me here. Uh, I just want to get started with uh how the season's going. We are very close to our first harvest, if not already started, with uh our early peach varieties Rich May, Desiree, and I think forgetting one more, but uh these varieties are very close to harvest. Uh so one of the unique things we noticed because we have a trial in on Desiree looking at thinning, of course, not the right year to look at thinning, but uh we noticed two distinct sizes of fruit. And when I say distinct sizes of fruit, not just like slightly smaller fruit and slightly larger fruit. These are two sets of fruit that are at least a week, week and a half, or two weeks apart from getting to maturity. Uh, it's still unclear whether the smaller size of fruit in these trees will get to maturity in in two weeks after, or they're gonna fall off, or not, they're not gonna mature because it's a very, very unique year, and we are seeing the regular-sized fruit that are ready to be harvested sometime next week, I'm presuming, based on the warm weather that we have in the next few days. And so uh uh definitely those are the fruit that you'll be harvesting next week. And then we saw a bunch of different usually we see a few of the smaller fruit, but this time in that one desire block at uh in Adams County in a growth orchard that we saw had uh tons of the smaller sized fruit. Uh, I I I think at least quite a few of them will come to maturity about two weeks later. It's just it's just uh that, and there's lots more of those small fruit than the larger fruit that's available uh for picking, which you will pick next week. So just some unique uh things that we noticed as far as peaches, the sizes of the fruit to distinct sizes. The idea is probably that during freeze during the freeze event there were some flowers that were open that got damaged, and some flowers

Apple June Drop And Canopy Steps

SPEAKER_02 2:34

that were a little bit further behind that escaped the freeze, and so that's why we are seeing these two really really distinct sizes of fruit. So just wanted to bring that to your attention. Um now moving on to apples. I think that uh talking to growers around the state, we have witnessed uh a heavy June drop, and this is not unexpected, especially because uh we saw a lot of damage that was coming from uh internal damage. We saw a lot of blackening of uh like blackened parts of the seed, the embryo, and things like that, and all those fruits were likely going to fall off uh it towards the end of May, early June, and the June drop, even though they looked like they were growing, even sometimes 25-30 cent 30 millimeter fruits, so like really large fruit just falling off. Uh, but in other locations, it is not necessarily because of that damage, but I think it's because of that whole tree stress that we had early in the season that uh through the natural process of June drop, we had a uh a heavy drop than we normally see. And so just wanted to bring that. And we are towards the end of June drop, maybe not for the northernmost regions of the state, but for the most part, I think we are towards the end of that. And uh whatever fruit that's left is most likely going to be taken to harvest, uh, fingers crossed. And uh, so this is a time to be uh start thinking about if you have a crew uh that's that you're looking for work for the crew, maybe they can slowly start with summer pruning to uh have more light penetration to the fruit, especially in blocks where you have close to a normal crop normal crop, uh, especially if you have extra labor that's available to do this. I know you're busy hand thinning right now, and uh only in July will you get some time for those kind of things, but just mentioning it here. The other thing I wanted to mention was for honey crisp, we are slowly entering into the season uh of honey crisp where we start to see the zodin leaf or zonal vein chlorosis in leaves, which is an indication, especially for premier honey crisp and then regular honey crisp, uh, around this time or another in another uh few weeks, we'll start to see that. And just before that is the right time to sample your leaves for your leaf test, specifically for honey crisp. For other varieties, it can wait, but for honey crisp, especially especially in the southern part of the strait for premier and regular, if you want to take a leaf test, you want to take the right leaf test. Uh, this is actually a good time starting now until uh two more weeks to uh take your leaf test and get those results before zonal uh leaf chlorosis sets in in honeycrisp. And uh your and even after that, you can still take a sample, but you'll get the most accurate sample and results when you take those tests right now to about the end of June, uh early July. So that's just something I want to mention. And uh, so you might have noticed that your trees are getting more vigorous than uh than normal, and we had uh two to three weeks of a dry period, maybe two weeks, but after before that and after that, we have gotten rain again, and so uh you might see that vegetative growth has sort of exploded. In that case, something to think about uh is again a high rate of apogee 12 ounces, especially if you've gone only with one or two apogee sprays in the beginning of the season. You could try an apogee spray, it will not help with the most vigorous varieties as much, like something like you know, a very vigorous Fuji or Golden Delicious block. To be honest, it's not going to do too much, but for sort of medium vigor to low vigor uh orchards or barfred blocks where you're seeing like uh growth exploding, uh one uh 12 ounce of uh uh apogee kudos spray uh could do you good uh to sort of reduce uh the vigor. And uh yep, uh keep track of your peach blocks, especially that are coming close to harvest, and uh because you might see these larger than normal gradient in terms of fruit sizes, uh, and two distinct gradients, so to speak, with ones that are ready to harvest next week and ones that probably need another week or two weeks at least to uh get uh to ripen and be ready for harvest. Uh so that's it for me. Let me know if you have any questions. Uh but it's a short update today.

Leaf Disease Scout Report And Spray Timing

SPEAKER_01 7:18

No, that sounds great, Sean. Thanks for uh thanks for the update, and I think everyone will be really thankful. So uh Carrie, you are next to you.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Okay, all right. So um my crew has been out raiding uh leaf diseases, and so I'm seeing you know, scab and powdery mildew rust. So not as bad as last year, believe it or not. Uh and I've already rated my rusty spot trial, my peach, and even that wasn't too extreme. So um diseases are out there. Uh so even if you don't have a crop, you still want to be mindful of still keeping things in check out there. Um, where you know, scab is over, part powdery mildew, we're getting towards the tail end of it. Right now, what we're seeing is secondary powdery mildew on the lateral leaves. Rust is done. Um, you know, with rust, there is no polycyclic nature. It's like once you see one spot, that's it. We won't see, you know, progression of that disease within the tree. And then Marcenina blotch, um, we are at the, you know, we're over that primary period. So folks hopefully should be scouting just to see where things stand, especially with areas that are low crop and you may be using a much less intensive spray regime out there. Um so just as a kind of again, a public service announcement for those um areas with low crop and you are using a much more conservative approach, just be mindful of, you know, especially if you're using alternate row middle sprays, keeping those intervals, being mindful of those intervals. Um, because, you know, the longer the interval, spray interval, the longer that side that hasn't been sprayed is going to be without fungicide. Fortunately, right now, you know, our rain events haven't been too extreme like last year, where we were getting like one to two inches a week. Um, it's raining today, um, Thursday morning. And then the rain we have had this month, it hasn't dropped a whole lot. So whatever fungicides you have out there, they probably have maintained through that rain event, but still don't stretch it. Um I'm kind of fine in them in myself in that position as far as I might be stretching my sprays a little too much. So um be mindful of that. Um, especially there are some other leaf diseases out there that are popping up that most likely are not on your radar, but I'm seeing them. And the one of that is ultranaria leaf spot. That actually happens early, and I'm seeing a fair bit of that out in the orchard. Um, these are circular, small brown spots, and they may have kind of a darkened purple um uh kind of outline of the of the spot. Um, there's also uh frog eye leaf spot that is most likely out there. With that one, you'll see sort of a similar spot to ultranary leaf spot, but you'll actually see a black dot in the center of that leaf lesion.

Bitter Rot Season And Brown Rot Prep

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Uh, and so and so just something to be mindful of. There are leaf spotting diseases out there outside of outside of scab and and rust and marcenina blotch that are popping up. Um, so as far as on apples, for those who have fruit, you should be making sure you've got some decent coverage on your trees to limit bitter rot, because that is the rot that we're most worry about because the spores are around all the time. So we are in the warm, wet conditions. So we're in bitter rot season. Where it's no longer ambiguity like it is in the month of May, where it's sort of like, is it, are they conditions? Are they not? So we are in conditions for bitter rot management, um, along with other rots too. But if you're controlling bitter rot, you should be able to be controlling the other rots as well. Uh, as far as for peach diseases, so we are, as Sean had mentioned, we are gearing up to be harvesting the first peaches for those of you who do have peaches. So we need to be thinking about managing for brown rot at this point. And because it's been so dry, you can be not as intense, I think is the right word for management for brown rot. Um, typically the regime is 18 days, nine days, and one day before harvest when you're spraying your pre-harvest fungicides. But do you have some of these early varieties and it's on the drier side? You could probably get away with one or two pre-harvest sprays. And the pre-harvest sprays I'm talking about are the big guns like your Marivon, Fontelis, Luna Sensation, Flint Extra, Luna Flex, Indar, any of the Inspire Super, any of those products. That's what I'm talking about, like those heavy hitters outside of your broad spectrum fungicides like captain and sulfur, which is probably what you may have been spraying up until this point, because that's what we're doing here at Freck, is that typically we take a conservative approach

Tart Cherry Leaf Spot After Harvest

SPEAKER_00 12:02

up until we get near harvest. So something to just be mindful about as we progress through the season, but especially, you know, as we're getting close to those early peaches being harvested. And also, just as a reminder, I know folks may not have tart cherries, or as I've heard, they may have enough tart cherries for one cherry pie. Cherry leaf spot is still a problem, and it's just like scab. And I think we've had enough wedding events to sort of uh keep cherry leaf spot happy out there. And so just still be putting on, we are in that we're getting near the cherry when tart cherries would be harvested. So in late June, July, be be mindful of putting on a couple fungicide sprays of post-harvest. I put say post-harvest in quotes, post-harvest fungicides on those tart cherry trees, just to limit that disease progression of on the leaves and premature defoliation because cherry leaf spot is very aggressive on tart cherry trees and can defoliate them pretty quickly. So we are thinking about

Fire Blight Help TAP And New Tools

SPEAKER_00 13:06

you know keeping those tart cherry trees happy and not stressing them out any more than they have, especially they've been through the ringer, along with all the fruit trees as far as this year with the freeze and such. Um, so as far as, and the last thing I will mention, kind of circle back to apples, is fire blight. So I have been hearing quite a few reports about fire blight being out there. And so, just as a reminder, if you've got a lot of fire blight and you find yourself pruning out a lot and too much, or it seems like every tree in your orchard might have it, just remember there is the FSA program that that's the that's TAP, the tree assistance program. I did write this article about this at the end of May, and maybe Don can link this fruit time news article in the description for this particular podcast, just as a reminder. You have to have, I think, 15% loss, at least 15 or more percent loss. And the thing is, is that make sure if you literally tap in to tap, FSA has to look at your orchard before you rip out any trees. Um, so they need to have eyes on that before you do any mitigation measures. If you need some kind of letter that's that is an expert opinion of why you're in the in the position you're in, this is where I come in and I can talk to FSA. I can write a letter explaining everything. I've done this for numerous growers when it's come to Fire Blight. So all hope is not lost if you are struggling with Fire Blight right now. Um, but um as far as slowing this down, I I talked to a grower recently. You know, uh we've talked a lot about fungi. Um, this is something that we were looking into at in the re my research orchards here at Freck. So fungiut is citric acid. Um, and there's some other ingredients in there, but the the main active ingredient is citric acid. It's uh, and when you are using it, you are basically making it an acidic environment when you're spraying this on your plant tissue. And Erwinia does not like acidic environments. And so this is the theory of why this product may be showing potential for slowing the progression of fire blight in your orchard, is because it's creating an inhospitable environment for Erwinia and it it's just not, it's just stopping it in its tracks. So we're testing this at Freck to see it so far. I've been pleasantly surprised by where we have used it, how well it's worked. And this was primarily in the early season. Um, and so uh we're I I think it really did sort of really stop things in its tracks for how severe it was this year. And it and it was so severe this year that Streptomycin most likely was overwhelmed because of just how intense our conditions were during that week of bloom, and it was summer conditions in the 90s. Uh, and so we had EIP values through the roof. And so another thing is that if you um, you know, apogee is still sort of the standard for limiting shoot blight. So this is also something else to think about. The other thing to be mindful of, these if you have older trees, much, much older trees, bigger trees, that seem to get fire blight every year, you always see shoot blight on them. That's most likely canker blight. Canker blight results when you leave fire blight cankers in the trees, and they are reactivated once the tree wakes up from dormancy, and that bacteria is going to be moving throughout the tree to growing areas. So you may see these clusters of shoot blight on limbs, and that's most likely related to canker blight. The only way to fix that is cutting out the canker, which you may be cutting out big limbs, or really dumping a lot of apogee or kudos prohexile and calcium to harden off the shoots. And it might be a little too late for that because of how far we are into the season and how far things are moving on. But just as far as an explanation, and I talked about this in articles leading up to the start of June, um, but something to be mindful of if you see a lot of fire blight. Also in these older trees. Those older trees can basically be the source of bacteria wreaking havoc in young orchards in your site at your site. So also something to be mindful of of those big older trees that might be shedding basically fireblight bacteria. Uh, so that's just something to be mindful of. Um, if anyone has issues with younger orchards and there's a lot of fire blight, reach out to me. I will, you know, help you however I can, especially if it is accessing the TAP program through the USDA. Um, and also um just as far as cutting things out, if there aren't a lot of shoot blight, you know, be mindful of six to twelve inches beyond the site where you see um trees. If it's a young orchard and you find yourself having to stump the tree, meaning you're cutting it off in mid-trunk. You may need to think about should I cut this off mid-trunk or just remove the whole tree and start over? And in some cases, folks may have to make that decision, and it just might be better off just to replace the whole tree. Um, so so yeah, it's this

Final Reminders And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 18:19

is there's a lot of people struggling with fire blights, so um, you aren't alone out there, and it's just it's another thing, another kick in the shins this year. So, but that's it. That's it for me.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Alright. Good stuff. Um I don't think we have any major events coming up. Uh there is one today at Freck, but it's gonna be a little late for by the time I edit this for people to show up there, unless they were already planning on it. Um yeah, just keep an eye on things that we'll be putting out. Uh we'll be doing some uh harvest data work, right, Sean? Even with what we got, even even if things are a little rough. Um, but we still got some time before we start doing that. Um yeah, thanks everybody for listening. Carrie, Sean, say goodbye, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

See you later.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Goodbye, everyone.