North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

Perhaps we should distinguish between organic matter and nitrogen. It 
might be difficult to have too much organic matter but it is easy to 
have too much nitrogen and commercial fruit growers usually do to get 
greatest yields; the final buyer seldom knows who grew the fruit so 
reputation is not much of a factor. Even at farmers' markets and 
roadside stands there are usually not enough sellers to allow effective 
competition for quality and buyers are generally quite ignorant, much 
more so than a couple of generations past. At the St. Catharines 
farmer's market the biggest of the three grower-sellers sells starchy 
apples of poor colour and flavour and has obviously been socking the 
nitrogen to them. I have noticed that the flavour of supermarket 
Jonagolds has deteriorated since they first appeared.

In 1979 the bulletin of the International Federation of Organic 
Agriculture Movements (number 24 if memory serves) had an article 
pointing out that the highest quality of apples was reached with a very 
moderate level of nitrogen, giving about 2/3 of maximum yield or less.
This has also been my experience; the best McIntoshes and Jonagolds I 
have eaten came from unfertilised farmstead trees (on clay) after sunny 
summers, although the grass under the McIntosh trees was clipped by sheep.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


Alan Haigh wrote:
> Because there has been so much talk about organic matter as a possible 
> salvation for contaminated soil I thought it might be appropriate to 
> point out that very rich soil is not the ideal for growing quality 
> tree-fruit in my experience.  It's like the old adage- feed the tomatoe 
> nitrogen to grow leaves not fruit.
>  
> I like to enrich a 5' diameter circle for a young tree which I do by 
> using mellowed horse stable waste as a 2 or 3"  mulch over newspaper.  
> If the soil is terrible or of limited volume I'll add a lot of compost, 
> mixing well into the top few inches.  In this case I may expand the 
> diameter.  This is all to speed establishment, once establishment has 
> occured, I notice that I generally get the highest quality fruit in the 
> least rich soil.
>  
> I'm sure this is old news to most experienced fruit growers but 
> vegetable gardeners usually assume the richer the better and in the case 
> of vegetables this is almost true.  Fruit growers are happiest with 
> moderately rich soil to promote moderate growth.