Agricultural Producers Have Until April 15 to Enroll in USDA’s Key Commodity Safety Net Programs for the 2025 Crop Year In an effort to remind agricultural producers about USDA Farm Service Agency’s Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) enrollment deadline for the 2025 crop year. I am sharing a toolkit that includes[Read More…]
Peter M Hirst
Facts for Fancy Fruit Editor & Professor of Horticulture
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
Area(s) of Interest: Commercial Tree Fruit Production
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
Area(s) of Interest: Commercial Tree Fruit Production
IFTA Summer Tour – California The 2024 International Fruit Tree Association (IFTA) Summer Study Tour will be three full days (July 16-18) in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, where current plans are for participants to visit the state’s largest apple packer just as Gala harvest will be starting, as well as new low-chill apples, some of[Read More…]
June 25 Tuttle Orchards 5717 North 300 West, Greenfield, IN We are pleased to announce that the fruit and vegetable growers will be joining together for a summer field tour being hosted by Tuttle Orchards in Greenfield, IN on June 25. Topics to be covered include fruit production, vegetable production, farm marketing, and agritourism. There’s[Read More…]
Making the decision on when to harvest can be a very tricky and complicated issue. The longer you intend to store the fruit, the more precise your timing needs to be. For summer apples, most growers only intend to store fruit until their higher quality fall apples come on stream, so storage times beyond a[Read More…]
Control Of Preharvest Drop with NAA: Preharvest drop refers to the process where fruit fall from the tree prior to harvest. Not all apple varieties are affected, but with some, such as McIntosh and Pristine, pre-harvest drop can be extreme. Several growth regulator materials are available to growers to help reduce pre-harvest drop. These materials[Read More…]
USDA to Host Two In-Person Listening Sessions for Producers in the RMA Springfield, Ill. Region to Hear About Crop Insurance Coverage for Prevented Planting SPRINGFIELD, Ill., June 27, 2023 –The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is inviting agricultural producers from throughout the Springfield, Ill. Region of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio to participate in one of[Read More…]
July 14, 9:00 am – 3:00 pm Jacobs’ Family Orchard 4676 North 75 West New Castle Indiana 47362 https://jacobsfamilyorchard.com The summer tour for Indiana fruit and vegetable growers will be held on Friday July 14 at Jacobs’ Family Orchard near New Castle, IN. While primarily apple growers, growing over 30 cultivars, The Jacobs family also[Read More…]
We’re getting close to the time when growers need to make chemical thinning decisions – for many the most perplexing and risky decision they will make all year. This is usually a tricky call to make. Remember that only about 5-10% fruit set is usually enough for a full crop. In other words, 90 out[Read More…]
Once flowers open in the spring, we’re hoping for warmer weather so the bees will transfer pollen and for rapid pollen tube growth. As we all know, apples require cross pollination, so for example Golden Delicious pollen will not fertilize Golden Delicious flowers. We rely on bees and other insects to transfer pollen from one[Read More…]
Something happened when the calendar switched from March to April. Spring finally sprung. As we discussed in the last issue of FFF, spring temperatures are so important because the rate of crop development in the spring is directly related to how warm it is. Here in Lafayette, April average temperatures have been in the 50s[Read More…]