Art:
Your rumination seems to have led to neither discovery,
enlightenment, nor identification of a problem.
Perhaps you accidentally hit the "send" button before re-reading the
message. Another agricultural industry that
continues to harvest from old trees and apparently old technology is
the one shown below in a brief presentation on cork harvesting from
oak orchards: Note: the links are to still photos illustrating the text below.
It is not my own work.
David Kollas
Kollas Orchard, Connecticut
Cork: Harvest for the Patient Farmer
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0-RFQhAaQIk/Un5ogZtWVTI/AAAAAAAArmc/93TchkuZIkA/s1600/cork+harvest+oak+15.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lKqHfOVw4gU/Un5zXJiQt0I/AAAAAAAArno/rdrYu_0Etc0/s320/wine+corks.jpg
Have you ever wondered where that cork in your bottle of wine comes from? The
answer is most likely to be Spain or Portugal, where over half of the world’s
cork is harvested - it is in fact the National Tree of the latter country.
However, unlike other forms of forestry, the production of cork never involves
the death of a tree.
Instead, they are gently stripped, leaving a strange but fascinating landscape
of denuded trunks.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YuayQUqKjjM/Un5hW4yte8I/AAAAAAAArk8/9nVaQuBPCdg/s640/cork+harvest+oak+5.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbenayas/2357225629/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/montuno/1591580602/in/photostream/
All of this takes some time. Cork trees can live to over two hundred years but
are not considered ready for their cork to be removed until they are at least
twenty five years old. Even then, the first two harvests do not produce cork
of the highest quality – it isn’t until the trees are in their forties that
they produce premium cork.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/catherine_glover/8383640384/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78586478@N06/8201364716/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/suhajdab/3963824824/in/photostream/
Once the trees have reached the maturity necessary to produce high quality cork
then they will be harvested only every nine years. A tree, in its lifetime,
can be harvested (the process is known as extraction) about fifteen times.
Little wonder then, that in Portugal and Spain the propagation of the trees and
the production of cork has become an inter-generational industry, with farmers
still producing a crop from trees planted by their great-great grandfathers.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6mP-Ha5Wi80/Un5gxNwLHaI/AAAAAAAArk0/JrM-URtWNqU/s1600/cork+harvest+oak+4.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42754460@N00/6760945341/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/max_westby/4183036756/in/photostream/
On Dec 10, 2013, at 9:43 PM, Arthur Kelly <kellyorcha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been ruminating over a recent exchange concerning tree size, density
> and longevity. A few thoughts not in any order or organization but as they
> occur to me.
> All orchards have a support system. If it is not posts, wires and stakes
> then it is large permanent limbs. If fruit is born on limbs that are no
> larger than your finger (some maintain pencil size) then you want a canopy of
> that size wood. The problem with permanent limbs is that they eventually get
> too large and contribute to trees that are too large. Those permanent limbs
> eventually become unproductive except for the very ends which you keep
> cutting back too. When you remove those large limbs then the resulting
> regrowth is overly vigorous. It seems to me that a system that has no
> permanent limbs will be more consistently productive of high quality fruit
> because you have new productive wood in the canopy all the time. It also
> seems to me that such a system is likely to have a longer useful productive
> life than a system with permanent limbs that has been planted too closely and
> eventually will have to be fought with to maintain and becomes overly
> vigorous and loses both productivity and fruit quality. The life of an
> orchard is more often determined by the economics of the value of the
> variety, productivity and efficiency of operation than by tree age or size.
> If you plant an orchard with the idea that it is permanent then at some point
> you will have an old orchard of varieties that are out of favor, of poor
> quality and inefficient to operate. There are few industries that are still
> selling the same product they were fifty years ago and producing it with the
> same fifty year old technology.
>
> --
> Art Kelly
> Kelly Orchards
> Acton, ME
> _______________________________________________
> apple-crop mailing list
> apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
> http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
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