Hello all, We have been fortunate enough that Smartfresh has been approved for use in Ireland. I am happy to say that we had a store treated on Monday, and look forward to testing these apples against controls in a few months time.
We have treated Jonagored (a Jonagold clone), a couple of Red Elstar clones and also Autento, Wellant & Karmijn de Sonnaville (trial quantities). The Elstar clones were fairly ripe; certainly eating well when treated, while the Jonagoreds were picked for medium-term storage. I can't wait to see how things turn out, and was like a child with a new toy when the agent came to treat the store. We are still harvesting apples here, and the weather has been great; dry and mild, so progress has been good. We expect to pick Jonagored for the next week or so, and also Karmijn de Sonnaville, and after that the Golden Delicious. The harvest timing has been most interesting, as the early varieties were two weeks ahead of normal, as indicated by the comments of Jean-Marc, who posted on this topic earlier. However, the later varieties are not ahead of normal, which raises questions about just whether it really is possible to predict optimum harvest dates from quite early in the year. Six weeks ago when we were picking the earlies, we thought that the maincrop apples would be well ready for harvest by now. Now they are not. How about that for inaccuracy? Con Traas The Apple Farm Ireland
