Nov 15, 2024

IFTA members gain grove insights, view Central Valley tech and orchard practices

During the California’s Central Valley tour, participants in the International Fruit Tree Association’s 2024 event viewed a variety of fruit tree training, pruning and harvesting methods.

The orchard bus tour showed how growers are more efficiently harvesting cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, apples and other tree fruit.

Apple challenge

The challenges of growing apples were in focus at Prima Frutta Packing in Linden. It’s difficult for growers to grow enough quality fruit with the right color, said Tim Sambado, president and founder.

“Apples are very difficult in California. They’re sort of a dinosaur,” he said. “We can’t get the same size with that same tonnage that the Northwest gets. We’re trying to hold on as long as we can with that commodity.”

Prima Frutta experiments with many rootstocks and varieties. “We have very little research going on in our industry from the university standpoint in terms of setting up trials on rootstocks and varieties and training systems,” Sambado said. “Consequently, we have to do it ourselves. As a packer and marketer that represents a lot of independent growers, we feel like we need to keep trying to learn something and if we find something that works, we can pass it along.”

Grower platforms

In 2020, Chinchiolo Stemilt California in Stockton began experimenting with platform pruning and harvesting cherries. Stemilt has trained and pruned 800 acres, is making bigger cuts and is picking the top third of the trees with the platforms, said Erick Stonebarger, general manager. This is part of an effort by the company to remove ladders from orchards.

With the platforms, five workers, including one driving and managing the platform’s speed, prune, train and pick fruit. The cost is $500-$700 an acre or 65 cents a pound compared to ground crews which can pick fruit for 10 cents a pound less.

“It’s not any cheaper; it’s friendlier. It’s definitely helped with fruit quality, but it has not helped with cost. But, at the same time, it hasn’t hurt us with cost,” he said. “The platforms are easier on the crew. It has allowed us to pick fruit a lot earlier during the day. We think it’s going to work well.”

Stonebarger said he believes harvesting all of its Rainier blocks in the next five years will require seven platforms.

Tech solution

Lodi Farming in Stockton has been replacing apple and cherry acreage with crops not requiring high labor requirements, including almonds and olives, said Jeff Colombini, president. Lodi worked with a now-defunct technology company trialing a harvester, and Colombini is aware of other prototypes. For Lodi, it’s more about labor costs than supply.

“We’ve been planting almonds because they’re mechanically harvested,” he said. “I’m hoping and praying that they’re going to come up with a robotic apple harvester.”

Because cherry trees are too wide for pickers on platforms, Lodi only harvests apples mechanically.

More people are required to pick cherries on the platform than to pick an acre of apples.

“I would probably need 50 platforms to pick the cherries and use them for three or four weeks versus three months,” Colombini said.

System trials

Because of fertile soil and water quality, about 80% of California’s stone fruit is grown within 20 miles of HMC Farms in Kingsburg, which grows peaches, nectarines, plums and table grapes.

In 2018, HMC replaced aging orchards with high-density orchards. Planar systems, with dual trunks on plums, for example, provide more growing structure.

HMC is experimenting with another plum system for varieties that don’t set well and need to produce more crop. Multiple wire systems are being trialed that are similar to four wire, single trunk system used in many apple orchards, said Drew Ketelsen, vice president and farm manager.

“Having these high-density planer systems, we typically are picking one less time than a traditional orchard,” Ketelsen said. “When you get to the bottom of the tree, you still get the difference from the top of the tree to the bottom as far as size, flavor and quality. The bottom is much better than the traditional trees because the traditional trees are mostly shaded-out.”

Pear disappointment

In California’s Delta region, Robert Arceo, who manages farming for Rivermaid Trading Co. in Lodi, ventured into selling his pears and cherries through farmers markets. He made the change following a difficult pear market. Just two pear-processing canneries remain of a dozen that once existed, with one limiting fruit acceptance.

Arceo has been removing Bing cherries and replanting with newer varieties, including Hazels, that mature two weeks earlier than the Bings; important in capturing early market demand.

Because the market is saturated with pears and cherries, Arceo, who also plants orchards for other growers, advises growers not to plant those crops. Instead, he began successfully growing avocados, a new tree fruit in his region. It takes eight to nine years to get a crop from a seed but three years from grafts.

“The nice thing about avocados, we spray them for thrips maybe twice a year, where with pears, we’re probably spraying 15 to 20 times a year,” Arceo said. “The cost is minimal as far as for pest control. It’s not like pears, where you have 21 days to get a pear crop off because the pears will ripen on you.”

Variety management is a part of the success at Warmerdam Packing in Hanford. Originally a peach grower in the 1960s, the company diversified into apples and cherries and was one of the first to trial Cripps Pink in California. Rainier and Lappen varieties also perform well. “We try to be innovative and find the latest and greatest,” said CEO John Warmerdam. “With rootstocks, it takes forever to sort that thing out, but we got lucky with Cripps that they’re as good as they are. We generally recommend those very heavily to our grower base.”

Cherry plums are highly fruitful and precocious, and can easily set 10 times more fruit than needed. Warmerdam moved from a 6 feet by 14 feet spacing system that produced trees with a tendency to be equally dominant and highly upright, which produced many suckers in the middle of the trunk, to a 5 feet by 19 feet fruiting wall system with two scaffolds that forces more tree lateral growth.

“We still have the challenges in terms of growing enough of the right kind of wood because when you get onto 2-year-old wood with spurs, the hardwood bud density is so high and the thinning costs are horrendous, which has been our biggest challenge,” he said.

The July 15-18 tour also included visits to Extension research centers that study stone fruit and grapes, grower tree fruit breeding operations and other farms.