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
Seal the Seasons is a growing food company founded on supporting local growers by making local food available all year-round. Seal the Seasons partners with local family farms on a state-by-state basis to source local food (focused primarily on fruit and vegetables), freeze it, and sell to grocers, with the grower proudly featured on the[Read More…]
Following the success of last year’s Summer Field Tour at Tuttle Orchards, this year we are again planning a combined summer field tour with the Indiana Horticultural Society, the Indiana Vegetable Growers’ Association and the Indiana Farm Market Association. We will be hosted by Garwood Orchards in La Porte, IN. While we encourage membership in[Read More…]
For chemical thinning of apples, the best time for post-bloom thinning is around 10-12 mm fruit diameter. With warm temperatures fruit can grow up to 1mm per day, so in northern areas we are right in the middle of chemical thinning time. Often at thinning time we talk about temperatures needing to be warm enough[Read More…]
This is the last installment of our series on spring temperatures for 2018. What a strange year it has been. We started out very cool until mid-April and it didn’t really warm up until early May (Fig. 1). I think every day since then has been over 80F. Although the early spring was much cooler[Read More…]
We are delighted to be hosted for our Summer Tour by Garwood Orchards – one of the larger and best run operations in the state. This applies to their fruit, vegetable and farm marketing activities. Whether you are a fruit grower, a vegetable grower or a farm marketer, you are bound to be inspired and[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. Even with a relatively mild spring without too much interference by spring frosts, this is a tricky call to make. In most cases, there are plenty of[Read More…]
We all know that it in the last two weeks, temperatures have warmed up considerably, but when we plot out the growing degree days (GDD), we can see how dramatic this warming trend has been (Figure 1). In Lafayette a couple of weeks ago, we had accumulated less than 100 GDD – now we’re closing[Read More…]
Would you buy something if you didn’t understand how it worked or what to do with it? Likely not… Imagine a customer of yours who doesn’t know how to select, prepare or store the fresh healthful produce that you are growing and offering for sale. How likely is it that they will buy that product?[Read More…]