Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ic apple growers prefer to fumigate new planting blocks and go through a
3-year recertification in order to avoid replant problems.
Try to determine if your orchard site was ever used for businesses that
could have contaminated the soil with toxic chemicals, including such activ-
ities as metal plating, battery recycling, or leather tanning. Again, if in doubt,
have the soil tested for heavy metals.
Present-day activities near your farm can also interfere with your ability
to grow fruit organically. Look around for abandoned or poorly cared-for
orchards, which are often reservoirs of pests and diseases. Highly mobile
pests, such as codling moth, Oriental fruit moth, apple maggot, and oblique-
banded leaf roller, can be extremely difficult to control when there is a dense
source of them nearby. The same caution applies to sites near to or surroun-
ded by woodlots, hedgerows, or windbreaks where wild pome and stone fruits
are abundant. Both native fruit species and escaped domestic species serve
as reservoirs of diseases and pests and can make organic production chal-
lenging. The level of difficulty increases in smaller orchards. In large orchar-
ds, management programs can often trap pests within a few fruit tree rows
around the perimeter, leaving the centers relatively free of pests.
Beware of industries that might pollute your site through contaminated
air or surface water runoff. The same caution applies to adjacent, nonorganic
farms, especially if their operations include airblast sprayers or aerial applic-
ations of pesticides. Growing organic orchard fruit can be challenging if you
are near large acreages of cereal grain, corn, soybeans, cotton, or other crops
for which crop duster planes and helicopters are still used to apply pesticides
and herbicides.
Pests and Diseases
and disease pressures are far lower in the American West and parts of west-
ern Canada than they are in more easterly locations. In eastern North Amer-
ica, for example, plum curculio is a pest that attacks many tree fruit crops
and has long been one of the most serious challenges for organic fruit grow-
