Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Organic matter in soil

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Organic matter in soil
  • Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:21:58 -0500

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.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page