 Well, hi everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm a food and nutrition specialist at North Dakota State University Extension and welcome to our February 20th 2019 webinar You can move to the next slide Tom. Okay Okay I'd like to invite you if you haven't already signed up We have some interesting upcoming webinars next week same same place We'll be learning about trendy and healthy house plants from Esther McGinnis And she's a horticulture specialist And after that we'll hear from Cassie Widerholdt who's the fruit project manager And she will be talking about cool fruits for cold climate. So you're interested in fruits here Here's your chance to learn more You've probably figured out how to use your zoom controls I have everyone in mute mode and if you've unmuted yourself I'll just ask you to remute yourself so we don't have background noise but You can certainly type in a chat if you have a question I'm going to be keeping my eye on the chat box so that I can let Tom know or he can keep an eye on the chat box as well So Tom is okay with asking questions during his presentation So just go ahead and type in the chat box if you have a question and you can answer them as he goes So next one Here's a big request in order to keep these going this these are sponsored by a grant that I have I asked that you Please complete a real short survey. It'll come right to your inbox shortly after the presentation today a promise that'll take you about two minutes and To sweeten the deal. I do have some prizes So I will be doing some prize drawings and we have some fun things that we will send out to the prize winners The next slide and so that brings me to my introduction of Tom Cald Tom is an extension horticulturalist for North Dakota State University Tom was raised on a farm in Minnesota where his family managed a commercial apple orchard and 15 acres of vegetables and berries And Tom is based in Bismarck and he supports horticulture programs in the western part of the state And he also coordinates the state's junior master gardener program And he's the author of the NDSU yard and garden report, which is a popular newsletter for gardeners in North Dakota So thank you Tom for joining us again this year and I look forward to learning more about apples Okay, thank you Julie. Thank you for the invitation. It's always good to participate in this field of forks series and Upon request, I've been asked to talk about growing apples in North Dakota Why apples? Because apples are Good for cold climates. Yes. I someone from Arizona. Sorry. You cannot grow apples as good as we can in North Dakota the cool temps Give us better quality apples And it's a hearty crop. It's a popular crop and it's a crop that's in demand even there's a booming cider industry begging for apples in our state and I think another important reason is because Apples are delicious. I just love to grow apples Every year when I go to our family apple farm With my kids my parents tell me they have to they just got to pay me for all the work. I'm doing but I just tell my Parents, I just tell them that hey, I'm the one who should be paying you It is such a joy to be out here in the orchard with my kids and the fresh air and picking apples Just a lot of fun to grow apples Apples are beautiful too in the springtime. We've got about a couple weeks when the apples are in bloom and Actually, this is another opportunity for like tourism farming and how spring tours of school children In the spring and in the harvest season So there's lots of opportunities for growing apples both in a commercial setting in a backyard setting and so we're going to cover kind of like the wide scope of it and I'll just do my best at Brush over a lot of key points about how to grow apples successful here in North Dakota To me, this is the symbol of the fruit industry in North Dakota Lonely apple tree in the distance suffering from winter. Yes, that's that's the apple That's fruit growing in North Dakota. We always brag about North Dakota about our agriculture Yeah, we're number one in sunflowers and number one in wheat germ wheat number one in dry beans But how are we doing in fruits? Not quite number one But not quite 50 either we're we're charging ahead. We're about number 48 now We have surpassed Alaska and Wyoming for fruit production. So we're on the upswing here, but it's still we're it's a tough place to grow a lot of fruits and We don't have a lot of Educational resources because it's not a major crop in our state But one of our leading ones is this publication starting a community orchard in North Dakota We're about half this book covers about how to grow crops and then the other half talks about how to manage a community orchard and actually I just got word a couple hours ago that the North Dakota Department of Agriculture is looking forward to supporting and Republishing of this so we'll probably get this republished and updated in about a month from now. So that's good As far as other educational resources, yeah we need to rely on other states other fruit growing states and focusing on the Midwest and I really like the series that's come out of Wisconsin about 15 years ago all the fruit Specialists in Wisconsin got together and decided to write Publications about how to successfully grow every crop every fruit crop in the state So there's one on apples and pears and cherries even like currants and elderberries But we're talking about apples today, and I like this publication it covers a lot about how to successfully grow apples in the Midwest And he has nice diagrams that teaches how to prune our apple trees. It covers about how we can The the different types of past that we have to be aware of and the time that they're going to be there and how we can Successfully control them. So these are good publications that I did I use as a resource The one of the leading home fruit production guys comes out of Purdue University It's an extensive publication with excellent information on how to grow apples and other fruit crops on a small scale And if you're on a big scale, you're gonna want to know about the Midwest fruit past management guide and This is for commercial growers This is a group of universities come together pull all their resources together And they have an updated publication every year that gives us the latest information about some basic strategies of growing fruits and then Detailed information on how to control the various fruit past both diseases and insects using Standard as well as organic practices It's a good public all this information is available for free online Okay, let's talk about how we can Get started with our apple situation First thing is we got to select a good site for our orchard and a good site will be full of Sun We've got to have at least eight hours a full Sun to have a successful orchard We want our orchard to be sheltered from the wind if possible because you know, we know how brisk those winds are in North Dakota Winds can create a lot of havoc in an orchard. They can deter pollination a little bit from the honeybee activity I've also I personally experienced, you know bushels of honey crisp apples blowing off the trees right before the harvest time Really cutting into the profits at our farm because farmers we don't it's technically not right to pick up a fallen apple and sell it The winds can also dry our orchards and make our trees sweat sweat off a little bit too much and and you know moisture is always critical in In our dry state of North Dakota. So if possible, it's nice to be sheltered from the wind if possible We want the swell to be well-drained Apple trees cannot sit in water and also we want to avoid frost pockets because frost can damage our crops in the spring time Destroying our apple crop this happened of just a couple years ago We lost many of the apples in our state due to a late spring frost and also We already have a short growing season to begin with if we try some late ripening apples and we get an early frost in the fall We can lose our apple crop or at least have severely reduced storage abilities of our apple crop From fall frost. So keep it out of the low spots. Keep it out of the frost pockets The next choice is where we're gonna buy our plants and And again, there's there's a whole gamut of whether we're gonna plant three trees or three hundred trees But for for on the small side just our local nurseries and garden centers are a good place to go They get their trees from Bailey nurseries from Minnesota and Jefferies nurseries up in Canada And you can contact those nurseries directly if you want larger amounts on a wholesale price You know Bailey nurseries is very calm is a very common source of all kinds of nursery stock and in North Dakota You can order bear root trees from junk seed. There's from Wisconsin stark brothers has a good fruit selection If you're up there in the cold part of the northern part of the state You may want to check out St. Lawrence nursery. They specialize in some of the heartiest apple varieties One green world is a good source if you want heirloom varieties Maple Valley orchards out of Wisconsin has a unbelievable selection available for you and Any place in the north you'll probably have good success getting quality apple trees When you order your trees, you got to know your hardiness zone and you guys are all experienced gardeners This is just like basics 101, right? We have zones three and four here and I don't know I don't know about this winter, but We're now most of our states now in zone four because we have less extreme winters than in the past Generally speaking for most of our state. It doesn't get colder than the balmy minus 30 degrees And so you know on about 90% of the people who live in North Dakota live in zone four And we've got a lot of apple varieties we can choose from that are hearty in zone four If you're up in zone three, you're gonna your selections are gonna be more limited Because especially with there's a lot of great apples that come out of the Twin Cities Minneapolis St. Paul area from the University of Minnesota And some of those apples would be marginally hearty in zone three The handout that I provided has a more extensive list of apple cultivars, but here's just a few to highlight I think as far as you want an early apple. I really like zestar Just can't beat it. Just it's a good quality for both cooking and and fresh eating Duchess is probably the most popular heirloom apples from Russia and it has good disease resistance There's a series of apples coming out now out of Canada that are very hearty and this includes good wind and prairie magic So especially up here in zone three you want to check out those Canadian apples Honeycrisp is the dominant apple of the upper Midwest today it's from Minnesota and Like in our in our my family orchard We charge twice as much for honeycrisp as the other every other apple we sell just because it's so popular And it just tastes so good. So as I say explosively crisp texture and honeycrisp also It stores surprisingly well Before honeycrisp came the number one apple of the Midwest was Harrelson and that's still very popular It's easy to grow apple. It resists diseases. It's a little bit tart which makes it a Not ideal for fresh eating, but it really makes a good cooking apple. Those are just a few apple cultivars to highlight There's hundreds of varieties out there. Just make sure you get one that's hearty for your area After you pick the cultivar you want to pick the rootstock that it's on This makes a big difference because the rootstock that the apple Variety is grafted on the rootstock will affect the vigor and the disease resistance of your variety and if I can start from the bottom The most common apple rootstock grown in North Dakota is a standard rootstock It has the rootstock of Antonovka or the doggo crab These are these trees grow fully 20 25 even taller They're very hearty this is what we would use in zone three, but the drawback about a standard apple Standard rootstock is that one of the problems is going to be that It's not precocious. It can take like six years sometimes before you start getting decent crops And that's why commercial orchards are more into Dwarfing rootstocks and in particular I think for North Dakota the semi dwarf rootstocks They're more precocious. We can start getting good crops after about four years Also, they're much easier to manage because the trees only grow about 12 to 15 feet tall especially the We look for varieties that can resist fire blight and that CG 30 or something referred to as G 30. That's one that was this fire bike and that's a hardy one for our state There's if there's dwarf apples and here's a picture of a dwarf planting I put in in a Bismarck This is Bud 9. This is a from this is the rootstock from Siberia. So it's very hardy and These trees only grow about nine feet tall and but my experience has been that they're not especially vigorous and Unless you really baby these trees you may be disappointed and these trees were not We're not really cared for that well at United tribes and there and we lost quite a few of them after just a few years So I especially like the semi dwarf rootstocks they're vigorous and precocious Now you notice that all these trees are staked and that's important for anything on especially on a dwarfing rootstock And you just see we see have a 10-foot tall Conduit pipe electrical conduit pipe to three-quarter inch in diameter and we just pound them two feet into the ground Staking helps to prevent wind damage in our orchard. It supports the union of the graph You know where we graft the rootstock to the variety or the scion is the technical term staked apples produce earlier and Produce higher yields and again, we just use standard conduit piping. We have good success with that Here's a close-up and you can see that graft the graft itself of the rootstock And when you plan to apple tree you want the graft to be a couple inches above the soil surface And if we have the the pipe there that will prevent this graft from a snapping off in the wind, which is a problem in North Dakota We like to keep the stakes on for as long as possible it doesn't hurt the trees certainly but Maybe some growers take them off after a few years You'll notice that the trees are mulched and mulching is critical for apple production all fruit tree production How do you mulch a tree there's the old rule of three three three we want the mulch to be three feet wide At least three feet wide Three inches thick and you want no mulching three inches within the trunk itself Because if you build up the mulch near the trunk you're going to have Metal mice and other rodents nesting there and nibbling on the trunk, which is a killer speaking of killers mulching protects a tree from mowers and mowers are a leading killer of fruit trees of all trees in North Dakota Multi will also conserve moisture, which is critical help to suppress weeds, which is nice another nice thing I like about mulching is that it helps this Insulate the soil And what it means is it takes away from those dramatic temperature fluctuations that can occur It keeps the soil a little bit warmer in the winter and a little bit cooler in the summer And in the early spring it keeps the soil a little It makes it a little bit slow to warm up and keeps the environment a little bit cool And that helps prevent premature blooming, which is a special problem with like apricot trees So I really I like the I like mulching very important for an orchard At least you got to keep the turf away from the trunk. Otherwise that tree's gonna have a hard life When you start your orchard, you got to make a commitment to watering your trees, okay? And so there's a lot of different rules for watering young trees one common rule is you use about 10 gallons of water per inch of caliper and for Apple trees we usually measure that well we measure that just at ankle height just a couple inches off the ground and When you buy an apple tree usually buy them about a half to three quarters inch in caliper So that'd be about five gallons to seven half gallons of water per week But only if the soil needs it we want to keep the soil moist, but we don't want that soil to be soggy We don't want to close the air pockets in the soil because otherwise we will drown literally drown the tree and cause it to rot The roots to rot so never irrigate wet soil For if you're just gonna have a couple apple trees these tree gator bags are a nice convenient way to fill them up with water And the water oozes out Slowly and another technique on the right you can see how five gallon pails are used sometimes and just Drill a few holes in the bottom and the water drips out But on the right I really want to highlight that white tree guard, which is very important for apple trees and other fruit trees fruit trees have thin bark and That bark is fully exposed to the rays of the winter sun and The that the bark can get very warm when the sun beats upon it There's no leaves shading that bark in the in the winter and then when the bark gets warm It can get active in the winter the cells beneath the bark will get active But then when the sun sets Those cells freeze rapidly and that can cause cracking or what we call sun scald injury I've got a picture of that. I just saw this at the post office in Bismarck last summer and you can see how almost every maple tree has this crack on the south or west side of the tree and same with fruit trees and if you have a white Tree guard the white tree guard will help to Reflect the winter sun and keep the bark Relatively cool. Okay, so use a white tree guard not a black tree guard. We want to reflect the winter sun Also, the tree guards can also help suppress another friend in the orchard voles or meadow mice which cause major damage That's fruit trees. They just love fruit trees. They'll bite off the bark and they'll girdle the tree They can kill the tree So look out for voles and always keep your orchard well or your lawn area will Will mowed right before the snow comes to minimize the amount of vol nesting habitat The other type of crater we got to worry about in apple orchards are deer And I can just tell you my own experience when I was when I planted the apple orchard United tribes have put in about 40 apple trees and Within two days every apple tree was pruned by deer Everyone everyone They just love fruit trees. There's just the sweetness and the taste of that bark is delicious to them I see is this deer is just I can see him Licking his lips. Just he was probably just waiting for me to leave the orchard so he could just come out and start eating the trees How do we control deer? Well, some people suggest that the permanent solution the lead solution is the best way to go by shooting them But another strategy and also a very reliable strategy is fencing Unfortunately an eight-foot fence is needed for deer And preferably Electrified but that people at United tribes did not want me to electrify the fence or put up a fence around the orchard So then you're you have to use repellents. So again for wildlife a barrier is the best way to go but otherwise a repellent can help and so I use liquid fence and liquid fence contains Guts of animals cankage we call it and sulfur smells like sulfur rotten eggs Anything that smells like a rotten body Works very effectively because the deer when they when they lick the branches before they eat them They get a scent of that rotten flesh and then they know there's a they sense there's a predator nearby and so they they learn to stay away from the orchard and I have to say I was very impressed with liquid fence in that Yeah, I even remember one night going out to the orchard and I saw a whole herd of deer grazing around The orchard So they were not interested in those apple trees after they were trained to stay out So how about are there any questions before we start talking about? Pest management does anybody have any questions about establishing the orchard getting a bone Tom there were a few questions that have come in okay From Judy. Why do apples need to be attached to a rootstock? Okay, a Lot of it has to do with hardiness and vigor so like a standard rootstock Like that doggal crab is a is from Russia and so that and to Novka. It's from Russia It will give a greater hardiness to let's say the honey crisp apple if you attach it to that rootstock So it's it really has to do with hardiness and vigor the plant now You can't you like you could plant you could take a cutting from a honey crisp and use it as rootstock But it wouldn't have that same number that same amount of hardiness and the other thing another reason why we use a rootstock Is it allows us to to have a rootstock that will keep the tree? Dwarf so that we we don't have to worry about a honey crisp tree going 30 feet or taller We can put it on a let's say a semi dwarf rootstock and that rootstock will naturally Limit the height of the tree to about 12 to 15 feet Okay, Tara wants to know if you have a preference for what you use for mulch Okay Shred bark is good for me if it's available The most yeah, and I would just say you know when we get to larger orchards the most important thing is Just keep the turf away But in a small orchard, I love shredded bark. That's great or wood chips. They're just as good Or just as good Okay, and the final question so far Comes from Judy. Can you review how new apple varieties are created? Since the apple seeds of a given apple variety do not ensure that it will produce the same variety apple when planted Well, yeah, sure Yeah, that's true because an apple. Let's say a honey crisp apple Cannot be pollinated by another honey crisp apple so So when you so that pond comes from a different type of parent So when you take the seeds out of a honey crisp apple, you have no idea what kind of Apple it's gonna develop that that seed when it grows into a tree Well, we know who the mother is the mother was a honey crisp But we have no idea who the father is because we don't know where the bee got the pollen from and it could be from a crab Apple could be from whatever So now actually this takes me back to my days in Minnesota. I lived right next to the the epicenter of apple breeding I was I did my master's research at the University of Minnesota horticulture research center in a Chanhassen area Where and that's the that's the birthplace of honey crisp and lots of apples there It's amazing how they you know, you had the big as a breeder You have to control the pollen. So let's say let's say we have a variety. Let's just draw haze in variety See, I wonder how I haze and if I cross the haze in with the honey crisp I wonder how it would be. Well, you visit manually take a haze and Flower with the pollen or you take the pollen from the haze and and you have to pollinate by hand that honey crisp flower and you have to close the Restrict the pollen so no bee gets in there to mess it up and then now you get that it forms an apples No, I I know I got a haze in honey crisp cross I'm gonna plant out those seeds and it's gonna take Many years it's gonna take ten years before you know whether or not Anything you did is gonna amount to anything and so they you know, Dave Dave Bedford out there. He has tasted hundreds countless hundreds of apples and Actually, even the honey crisp apple almost got I think I heard once it it was supposed to be a That planting was supposed to be destroyed because it wasn't it wasn't didn't taste good in the very beginning But they never got around to digging up that planting and then later Dave came out there and he said wow, that's really great apple I think I'm gonna make this one famous So it's really it's so time-consuming takes years and years ten years or longer hit or miss and You know over 99% are failures. How's that for life? That takes a lot of dedication So that's a lot of work and it's slow And but when you hit the jackpot you hit the jackpot because once you once you discover the honey crisp You can take cuttings from it and have and just multiply it that way Good question. Okay, one last question and then we'll let you go on okay What is the ideal and maximum spacing for standard size and semi dwarf trees needing cross pollination? Okay, well as far as the planting between the trees if it's a standard size tree I plant them at about 23 feet apart If it's a semi dwarf tree, I plant them at about 15 feet apart and And also got keeping into mind your farm equipment and your ability to get the sprayer between the rows too You can plant them a little bit farther apart if you want it depends on how much you know how precious the land is As far as pollination goes Usually when you plant a large orchard you will plant them in such that you will have Let's say you'll have two rows of honeycrest in one row of a hero sin Two rows of a honeycrest one roll of a hero sin. So the pollen will always be It should be at least within a hundred feet of it You know you should have at least a hundred feet of a different variety nearby and Sometimes people if they don't plant in rows like that, they'll have our they'll just have every third tree be a different variety Because you have to have different pollination Excuse me That's a good question. So like even like when you think about your backyard You should have a you should have a crab apple or another variety within a hundred feet to get good pollination Because that brings up a good point Julie that you know You got to plant at least two different cultivars because one cultivar will reject its own pollen Good questions Any other out there? Um, we'll come back to we have there's a couple more let you keep going. Okay, I'll keep going. Let's talk about Controlling pests because pests are a big problem with apples and we're talking about diseases and insect pests And I think a lot of us when we think about controlling pests. We automatically think about spraying chemicals, but actually Sanitation is of prime importance in the orchard whether it's a backyard orchard or a big orchard because The diseases and insect pests can overwinter on fruit and leaf litter So at the end of the year, it's very important that you collect the fallen fruits or the fallen leaves or at least mow them to prevent the the past whether it's a disease or insects from overwintering and Infecting the tree the following year. So again, think about raking It's if it's a small orchard raking just as important as thinking about spraying or at least mow underneath the trees If it's a if we're worried about diseases Fundicides calm we're gonna use fundicides and the most common one use their cap can Mancozeb early in the season or for organic growers wettable sulfurs use The key is you got to use it when the buds break because that's when The infections occur is in springtime when the buds are just breaking. So if I'm just gonna spray my orchard three times with the fungicide I'm gonna spray When the buds break just start to emerge and then fall about every seven to ten days And just like if I could just do three sprays, I can control a lot of the diseases in the orchard that way For and here's the most the most killing disease is fire blight. So we got to talk about that fire blight is Shown this is a classic symptom of a hook or a shepherd's crook. We say at the end of the branch and the branch looks torched Okay, this is a bacteria. It's in the wood There's only one way to control it and has to cut it out cut that wood out of the orchard and you need to go The most modern techniques is what we use is what we call the ugly stub treatment So what we do is we get in the orchard as soon as you see the symptoms And we try to cut out all the all the blackened the scorched wood and then go at least eight inches beyond that and preferably 12 to 15 inches beyond that We prune back to a stub. We don't prune back to the branch. We leave a stub and The stub should be about four inches or more and the wood should be at least two years old And what we found is that any fire blight bacterium that we didn't cut out in our first cup will accumulate in that stub We paint the stub, you know after after we make it the stub and like a fluorescent orange paint or whatever And then we go out there in winter and we cut off the stub So that's the most effective tool against fire blight, which is a killer in in orchards Okay, lastly with bugs Some common insecticides would be malathion or if you're an organic grower neem other ones Carbryl is sometimes used later in the season to control insects or maybe Pyrethra's I see home fruit orchard products with that So those insecticides are available But the timing is key and also if you don't want to be spraying a lot And you're just a small-scale grower or backyard grower consider the use of traps to monitor for the past The other thing is the last few words are after the petals fall. Okay, there's no sense in protecting fruits Before the fruits are formed. So that's after pollination and we don't want to spray until the petals have fallen because then The bees will all be gone and we don't want to harm any honey bees So wait till after the petals fall and then we have to consider Insect management and you need to know the insect patch you're going after and in our limited amount of time I'll just briefly talk about the most common one And this is the apple maggot and this is caused by a fly Who lays her eggs into the fruit? The eggs hatch and then they create these little tunnels into the fruit. It's the most common insect pest in North Dakota It's also not that difficult to control Because the fly doesn't even emerge until early July like the 4th of July it wakes up from the fireworks and here it comes It's ready to lay its eggs and so we can trap for that We don't have to spray ahead of time. We can set up these sticky traps and There's the apple maggot traps are available online and at major garden centers They're covered with the sticky material the fly when she emerges in the 4th of July She'll be attracted to the red color because she's looking for a ripe fruit and all the other fruits will be green And so you can just go out to your orchard starting you can put these up in late June and Just inspect your trees just put a few of them up in each tree Especially on the sunny parts of the tree like in the west or south side and especially near a brushy area that that would help too Just go out there and it's in monitor for the past if you don't see any any Any maggot flies that means there's no maggots around so we don't have to be spraying But then if once those maggot flies do appear then you know, that's when you have to make your decision as far as how you're gonna manage the past and You know, are you gonna manage the past and use insecticide or do you want are you just gonna have like applesauce with your apples? It's your choice But traps are available to monitor for pass Okay, I'm gonna just wrap up with a talk on with some important facts on pruning and I want to focus a little bit on pruning because this is badly needed and Now it's the time to do it. It's perfect timing. We should prune our apple trees every winter Every winter and the whole key to pruning when you prune is to think about I want to get as much sun and wind movement into the canopy Also pruning can get the dead wood out and keep the height of the tree manageable Unfortunately, this is a very common apple tree in North Dakota. Lots of backyards have trees just like this never pruned We all enjoy the spring blossoms and then we just hope we get a few fruits And then when the fruits fall down or we shake the tray and we pick up the fruits We just hope and pray that the maggots weren't visiting that year. That's not the way to do it Here's another look at it. There's there's just no there's this is gonna be poor quality apples if any from these trees I Could spend a whole hour talking about apple pruning, but we're not gonna I'm gonna give you just a very quick us The short version of it I want to say Emphasize one point is that a lot of times people are hesitant to prune because they feel like they're they're not confident in doing it They think they're gonna screw up and they're gonna kill the tree somehow. Don't worry about it. It's just a tree, you know it'll survive and You're in control. You got the pruners. Go ahead and start start going after it and Even if you just even if you're hesitant just if nothing else take out these vertical shoots called water sprouts Okay, anything vertical is not fruitful Anything vertical is not fruitful These water sprouts all they do is cauter up the tree prevent good air movement prevent sunlight Just take out the water sprouts if people would just do that every year You'd have a much better apple crop and you don't have to think about it and also I see like towards this top center of the tree You can see this this this branch moving inward Take out any branches that are growing inward we want the branches to grow outward Okay, it's really it's not rocket science and don't worry the tree will be fine There you go. Just get out there. Here's a vertical water sprout just with leaf buds on it No fruit buds. It's not gonna produce any wood. Let's get it Any fruits. Let's get it out I'll just quickly go over a few key points and again, this is in the handout that I have for you take out the suckers suckers are They just cut her up the tree the bottom of the tree. They do nothing good for the tree Next take out the water sprouts those thin shoots are just like pencils that come up They don't produce fruit. They just clutter up the tree in the big picture. We want a young tree To be trained so it's like a Christmas tree up like a pyramid where the widest branches are at the bottom So for example, if you have up here A branch that's going to shade the lower branch cut trim it back and when you trim back A tree an apple tree you cut it just above an outward facing bud again. We want the tree to grow outward Okay, take out vertical branches. They're not fruitful We want to have the tree stop at about 12 to 15 feet tall Not any higher than that because it's too hard to manage So don't let branches get taller than the litter leader branch cut them out Any branches that are growing inward take them out They just clutter up the tree and any branches that are drooping or horizontal They will be fruitful but the problem is they're not sturdy when you get a fruit load on them those branches will drop They'll just crack and so ideally we're looking for like what we call a 60 degree angle or two o'clock Ten o'clock. Those are the strongest branches for us Open up the canopy. I like this drawing and that before we see all that wood in there But after a while look how open it is You know if you're not sure whether you're you're done pruning or not it means you're not done keep going Open that up and a lot of times after I prune a tree. I go wow I really did a number on that guy But he come back in the summer and you look at wow it really fills in nicely And there's lots of sunlight in that tree the apples are gonna be bright red and the leaves are gonna be rich green So get in there and thin out open up that tree And orchard is in Wisconsin gave me a tip once he said Tom If you're not sure whether or not you're done You're not done You should be able to pick up a rangy farm cat And throw it through the tree If the cat gets stuck You got to keep pruning there you go now Of course, I would never recommend throwing a cat in a tree That's just not right You know, you can break a lot of branches that way. So don't do that But on the other another way we can do it without worrying about cats is there's an old saying about You should allow a robin should be able to fly through the tree in the early spring time So those are some tips open up the tree and get it some sunlight Let's say lastly if you got an old tree, what do we do again the same principle We want to open up the canopy get more sun in it Get rid of the dead wood get rid of those branches crossing over and get rid of those water sprouts those vertical branches And lastly that apple tree if it's an old tree and neglected it's probably 25 feet tall It's you can't manage those kind of trees. So reduce their height And here's a diagram of how we're going to cut out some of that central trunk We've got to bring that tree down and we're going to look for some vigorous scaffold branches ones that not not the oldest branches, but maybe about eight inches and Lustrous wood still young wood young sturdy branches. That's ideally what we're looking for and we'll have a tree something like this Or sometimes in the oldest orchards like really a well-managed orchard Is really it's not gonna it's not gonna live more than 40 years before the trees lose their productivity But in some of these really old orchards These heirloom orchards You see these old trees that are more than 40 years old and over time We try to keep the height low and they develop more into like an umbrella shape So I see this in a lot of old orchards, which you could find still in North Dakota So maybe that would be the kind of way an old apple tree would look but still could be managed Okay, I want to thank all the photographers for making their photos available through creative commons And I don't know does anybody have any questions. I'd be happy to answer them Okay, there were several questions. Okay. Here we go Um from k Isn't the hazen on its own rootstock naturally semi dwarf and developed in north dakota Okay, uh, yes and no hazen is from north dakota hazen is naturally a semi dwarf rootstock And I personally I think that's about its only good quality Um, but when you buy a hazen it will not be on its own rootstock It will probably be on a dolgo crab rootstock. That's by far the most common one in north dakota Okay, uh another julie in the audience says the apples on my harrelson have black spots on them every year They still taste good. I just cut the the spots out. But what causes these? Okay, if they're a black blackish spot, there is a A disease called sooty blotch and fly speck And the sooty blotch looks like ashen blotches The fly speck looks they come in clusters of tiny like black pinprits It looks like about 30 or more pinprits all right next to each other and those diseases often Come together harrelson's very susceptible to that. So it's a fungus disease. So what are we going to do about it? Okay, I think first of all Anything we can do before early spring to rake or mow underneath the tree can help reduce the presence of that fungus But then the most important most important thing for that is you got to prune the tree to get more air and sunlight because Sooty blotch and fly speck love humidity and that's that's when I see it most common It's in a tree that's not being pruned hard enough Also, if in some cases Underneath the tree, there's not any air movements. It's maybe too grassy. The grass is too tall. So make sure you mow underneath the tree and You can prevent the spread of sooty blotch and fly speck by fungicides all the ones we talked about cap tannins most common or Sulfur for an organic product that can help and you would be a commercial orchard We spray all Every two weeks from a bud break to near harvest time So it depends on how extreme you want to go but but usually we can handle that problem just by Being more aggressive in our pruning All right, then someone asked about the name of the publication for fruit pests Which I went back into your presentation, but I just want to be sure that I got it, right? The midwest home fruit production guide cultural practices and pest management Is that correct? Yeah, there's There's there's a bunch. I mean if you're really into pest management The most extensive one is the midwest fruit pest Fruit pest guide midwest fruit pest guide in and that tuggers detailed information about insect and disease control that list all the fungicides all the All the bactericides all the insecticides and how to how to use them properly if you're looking for more general information that midwest fruit Production guide from produce good or I like those wisconsin guides too Are both of those on the internet? Yes, everything's online for free if you want and they're also available for purchase And you can get you can buy a copy from but it's all online for free Okay, we'll try to get those linked on our website with tom's presentation um Here's minnesota joe s for newly grafted baby trees Rootstock branches are fighting with new scion growth to be main leader How should I prune to rootstock growth to prevent from becoming leader while still trying to maximize photosynthetic potential for the very young tree Okay, so the rootstocks are the The sprouts in the rootstock Are surpassing The scion is that I guess that's what joe's asking. Yes. Yes. So, okay You can't okay the whole the whole thing the most important thing is what? branch Is that the top is that the apex? The apex because that will give the apical apical dominance and that will get special hormones So you just can't allow that rootstock to get taller than the The branches of the the rootstock to get taller than the branches of the scion. You just can't allow that So just prune it out Trinity gardens asks how many fruit mega traps they need Okay, it depends on the tree the size of the tree It depends on the situation Um, okay for a standard size tree Let's say five traps would be great if you could do that But at least three it'd be nice and focus on them on the sunnier parts of the tree On and on trees in your brushy areas where the maggots are most likely to enter the orchard first If it's a large planting Then we focused the the mega traps along the border of the planting Because that's because that's more likely where the maggots are going to come from Okay, so the sunny areas of the tree If it's a if it's a dwarf or semi dwarf Three traps would certainly be enough Larger trees, maybe five would be a better And here's a question from judy She says you mentioned that you need to have another variety of apple or crab apple tree near your yard Apple tree to have pollination Given this how can you ensure that the apple tree initially purchased from a nursery? And planted in your yard will continue to produce the selected apples of the type of apple tree that was initially selected Okay What let's say when you buy let's say our friend Hazen when you buy a hazen apple tree That will always produce hazen apples Because the fruit tissue is asexual. It's not affected by the pollen It's maternal tissue. It's hazen tissue Now let's say you got a let's say you got a honeycrisp planted with your hazen The hazen will always produce a hazen apple But the seed inside the hazen apple will be affected by the nearby honeycrisp So So it's the seed that's the issue because that's sexual sexually propagated So in the nursery trade, we never you know, unless you're dav bedford at the university of minnesota The only We only use cuttings. We only use hazen cuttings We never take seeds outside of hazen apples to uh to grow hazen apples. You can't Okay, so it's it's Maternal tish the fruit that we eat is maternal tissue. It's not sexual And here's a question from jen r What should I do to the soil to ensure growth? We purchased trees last year and they did not make it. We were wondering if it was the soil Wow Okay All right I okay. Here's the ideal situation is Before you plant an orchard you get a soil test and even in your and like right now like as soon as that ground thaws out Get out there do a soil test do a general soil test uh for a plant like an As adaptable as an apple is in North Dakota. I'd be surprised if the if the soil was the problem I really I don't think the soil was the problem something else happened there It was uh if it dies right away It's uh improper watering or the roots were rotten to begin with There's it's such a harsh climate in North Dakota. Maybe something happened there or maybe it was a maybe maybe if you bought it from um A less than ideal place the the roots may have been rotten or it was a big box door Maybe the roots were rotten from over watering But I'd be really surprised if the soil was the issue that's You know what what would what would that be it would be like ph it'd be too alkaline And that would have to be so extreme you'd have to have like the worst soil in North Dakota for that to happen And what you would see your the leaves would be yellow with green veins So I doubt if that's what you saw As long as it's Proper drainage that's the most important thing but let me also throw in LSA. It never hurts to do a soil test That is valuable information that can help you manage the soil And usually save money on fertilizer because we have a tendency to over fertilize our plants And I have one more question for you This comes from minnesota joe Which varieties have the best growth habits to lend themselves well to espalier? Oh, wow Keep me on your toes Uh, joe, I don't know I you know what I've never grown an apple espalier style And I think just about anyone would do the job if you're willing to do it pairs are more famous for espalier Um, you know what when I select an apple The thing I'm most concerned about is its hardiness that would be the thing I'd be most concerned with and uh Maybe for a espalier apple, I would also I just myself I would consider maybe uh A smaller shape a smaller footed. Maybe uh, like a chestnut crab apple. Maybe try that But I think almost any variety would work All right. Well, I will draw it to a close and I want to thank everyone for participating and I especially want to thank tom for a very entertaining and Very educational presentation. So thank you very much Thank you everybody and if anybody has any questions As springtime rolls on please feel free to ask me you can find me via email I'll be happy to help you And bob has just let us know that the links to tom's slides that a handout the fruit production guide and the fruit pest management guide are available On the field to fork webinar and his presentation will be archived Within the week. So thank you again everybody and please take the survey And thanks to bob and thanks to julie too. You guys are great. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks a lot Welcome