Filling Space

 Filling Space. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

For writers there is nothing quite as daunting as a blank page. Where to start and in what direction should you go. The same holds true for orchardists with a new orchard. Matt Whiting with WSU takes a look at filing that space.

WHITING: You’ve got a new orchard, you’ve got new land, you’re breaking new land or you’re renovating existing land and you’ve got to get back to a productive orchard situation and I’m going to describe a little bit about why we might do that and how we might do that. 

Whiting has three basic ideas on the topic.

WHITING: Filling space, well why would we? I think we do agree that’s a good objective. Then most importantly how could it be done and this is fairly debatable and then lastly how do you know when the space is actually full. When should you say when?

You could ask the question why would you want to fill the space.

WHITING: Just a bit of background on why would tend to fill the space, it basically comes down to productivity and in this case early productivity which means precocity, which means return on investment. You’re certainly not there to take 10 years to fill up an orchard space and get into productivity. You want to do so immediately and recoup that significant investment.

Whiting was speaking to this years attendees at the Washington State Hort Associations Annual Meeting and Expo in Yakima. More tomorrow.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.