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[<dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com>]

Claude,

 

All of our Honeycrisp are on B9, M9 and M26 rootstock and the oldest trees are about 3 years old.  Over the last 3 years we have planted approximately 500 trees per year and will now be adding about 500 more in 2008.  The M26 rootstock trees planted in year 1 are about 6-7 feet tall and yielded most of the 80 bushels with the younger trees yielding much less.  We projected about 2 bushels to the tree on the tall spindle system we are using with approx 750 trees/acre.  On your typical tall spindle the max yield in field tests is about 1,000 bushels/acre from trees spaced 4-5 feet and row spacing of 10-12 feet with tree density being any where from 750 to 1,000/acre.  The advantage is earlier fruiting, minimal pruning and no ladder picking.

 

We projected around 4,000 bushels at full maturity and about 90 days of inventory which is what we need for our season.    And Honeycrisp is one of the best storing apples there is.  I have stored some in RA storage at 34 degrees for 6 months and they were as crisp at the end of the 6 months as they were when stored. 

 

Our total sales have doubled since 2004 and are still growing.  This season we are 35% above last season, but we ran out of apples on October 10 last season since we had an off year crop wise.  This season we had a bumper crop and will have only a few hundred bushels left at the end of the season.   

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com
http://www.theorchardkeeper.blogspot.com
http://www.revivalhymn.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Claude Jolicoeur

To: North American Fruit Explorers

Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:51 PM

Subject: Re: [NAFEX] honeycrisp market

Dennis,
I am trying to figure out some maths from your numbers...

You wrote:
>>>>
This season we harvested about 80 bushels of Honeycrisp
<<<<

and, a little further:
>>>>
And....yes, we are planting 500 more Honeycrisp trees next spring to give us over 2,000 total.
<<<<

So I figure you got these 80 bu from your existing 1500 trees - I assume then that most are still too young to be in production.
I don't know what size of trees you have, but for mid-size, 4 bu per tree could be a normal avereage (unless you have really dwarfs). So, when your 2000 trees will be in full production, you would harvest somewhere around 8000 bu of Honeycrisps...?? That's 100 times more than what you sold in 2 days, so would take 200 days to sell - I don't think they keep that long.
I imagine you have already thought about this as I gather from your posts that you are a wise business man and a good orchardist - so you must have some other plans to sell all these 8000 bu.

Claude