How can I resist an invitation like the one from Mosbah? We had an interesting spring in Ireland (as per the Chinese curse; "may you live in interesting times"). Much of March and April had settled warmer than normal weather, due to the unusual deviations in the jet stream (associated with a warming artic unfortunately), meaning that our weather patterns settle for much longer than we are used to. And so our trees were off to an early start. When the weather did eventually change, it settled into a pattern of winds coming from the north, which also lasted longer than usual, with the effect that each night grew colder as time went on, due to the cooling of the ground. Consequently, quite a lot of frost damage (80-90% flower blossom loss) was recorded in Northern Ireland, where all the cooking apples are grown, but luckily not so much in the south, where I am, and I suspect that I could still have pretty much a full crop, despite the loss of about 20% of flowers on apples. The plums which bloom earlier were more badly damaged, but nothing that I don't expect every few years with them, due to Ireland being such a marginal location for growing them. At this stage the weather is more normal (showers one day, rain the next, with the odd dry day) with lots of scab periods, and only just enough opportunity to spray, but that is the way we like it, as with almost no irrigated orchards in Ireland, having the soils at field capacity now, before what will hopefully be a nice summer (El Nino years are also warmer than average in Ireland), keeps the trees from stress for quite a long period. We have a new weevil pest (I think it is called rose weevil; it is bronze coloured), the adults of which eats the flowers of apple and cherry as well as damaging the small fruitlets, but luckily the pheromones have now been synthesised, and trapping will begin shortly. Other than that, on the marketing side, cider (hard), which was always mass-produced here in Ireland, is now undergoing a revival as about 10 smaller craft producers have started in the last few years, which makes it very exciting for growers, and also draws great attention to our small apple producing industry here. Brief report over, I will try to post before prompting the next time :)
Con Traas Life Sciences Dept., University of Limerick. & The Apple Farm, Tipperary. Ph: 061-202905 M: 086-6091998 T: @theapplefarmer From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Kushad, Mosbah M Sent: 14 May 2015 14:56 To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: Re: [apple-crop] crop prospects The update from Illinois is relatively good.. We also had snow bloom and sunny and warm few days during the early part of bloom which gave us good fruit set on the kings. But the weather turned cold and windy during the middle and end of the bloom which has kept the bees in their hives.. Never the less, we should have pretty good crop. My concern is for the persistent cold weather that we are still having, which is likely to reduce the thinners activity, especially NAA and MaxCel. Just curious.. I have not seen any recent postings from our Irish/Dutch friend Con Trass. I hope is just busy counting his profit from last year. Mosbah Kushad, University of Illinois From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net<mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net> [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Michael Vaughn Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 7:25 AM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: Re: [apple-crop] crop prospects Arthur, I have a small Orchard in NE Pa. and the trees are loaded with Blossoms. The flowers opened starting Monday PM and full open by mid-day Tuesday. Going to be a very heavy set given the dry weather forecast and nice 70 d days. On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Arthur Kelly <kellyorcha...@gmail.com<mailto:kellyorcha...@gmail.com>> wrote: I don't know about the rest of you but if we get any kind of pollination weather the crop will be very heavy and difficult to thin. The potential bloom at this point is scary. We are at pink except for cracking some king flowers on Zestar, Paulared, Gingergold etc. -- Art Kelly Kelly Orchards Acton, ME _______________________________________________ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net<mailto:apple-crop@virtualorchard.net> http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop -- Michael D. Vaughn Owner / Manager Pie-In-the-Sky Orchards
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