Subject: [NAFEX] Exploring fruit management methods
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:55:06 -0500
Richard Moyer wrote:
With deer in charge of cleaning the
orchard floor, the incidence of apple maggot, coddling moth and plum
curculio is quite low here for many cultivars
Thanks Richard, for pointing out my mistake. I planted peaches long the
edge of the garden, rather than in a block where I could fence the chickens
under them. I have been regretting that mistake for some time. Most of my
peach trees are seedlings from a single tree at an abandoned homesite. I
picked a plastic grocery bag full of perfect fruit, and judging by the pits
that had been chewed and mouthed clean by deer, I was only getting the tail
end of the crop. Now I know why they seem so susceptible to curculio under
MY growing conditions. Do any of you remember the article "Who stole the
Plums?" published in Pomona about 11 years ago? I'd found it in a book from
the turn of the century, about a plum orchard that never produced till the
owners gave up, fenced it, and ran calves and chickens under the trees. Not
only did the chickens clean up the ground all winter, but every time a calf
scratched against a plum tree, jostling it, the chickens were right there to
pick up the curculios that dropped. The very next year, they had a bumper
crop of plums, and the trees continued producing under those conditions.
Donna