Filling Space Part 3

Filling Space Part 3

Filling Space Part 3. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Matthew Whiting, Associate Professor with WSU’s IAREC recently discussed starting an orchard from scratch or refurbishing an existing orchard. In addition to making sure the soil is prepared and ready to go he says there are several other things to look at.

WHITING: Fumigation. I heard this repeatedly that this is really critical to getting good growth and filling the space early. You don’t want to be going into a scenario in which you are dealing with organisms in the soil that are going to hamper and reduce that first few years of growth so fumigation being key.

He says it is also very important to start with good nursery stock.

WHITING: We’ve all seen orchards where you’ve taken those 3/8ths inch trees because they’re kind of cheap and that’s kind of all they had and you put them in and you just knew it from the beginning, they didn’t fill the spaces well and they were behind the 8-ball from the beginning so starting with the best nursery stock.

You also must match your planting stock to the system and density.

WHITING: Another possibility in terms of space in terms of a management approach is just put the trees closer together. Kevin Polland in New Zealand is growing cherry trees in pots that he brings out in the spring. Puts them out in the density and configuration that he wants under his nets and then brings them back in so he can manipulate density  and fill that space quite readily in a way that’s quite novel and different from how most of us do it.

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

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