Your Classic Apple Orchard

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When removing the diseased branches, cut six inches or more below the visible disease margin, and 12 inches below is even better for fire blight—blackened shoot tips curved like a shepherd's crook. Sterilize pruning tools between each cut—by dipping them in a solution of one part household bleach to nine parts water—to avoid spreading the disease. Rinse, dry, and oil the tools when you're finished, to prevent rusting. Right after bloom, check for blighted spurs and break them off—that's faster than cutting and you won't spread the disease.

By choosing varieties that resist fire blight, cedar apple rust and white rot, and by following the cultural practices outlined above, we haven't needed any disease-control sprays. Growers who choose scaband mildew-resistant varieties, where these diseases are problems, can do the same. "Organic" sprays for diseases can do more harm than good. Sulfur kills predator mites and can lead to outbreaks of pest mites, and both copper sulfate and Bordeaux mixture partially defoliate apple trees and cause fruit to russet (a patchy, netlike brown coating that cracks the skin and encourages white rot.

There are naturally russeted varieties, on the other hand, which develop a thick brown coating over the entire fruit, like that of a Bosc pear. This protects against rots and diseases on the fruit's surface (scab, mildew, sooty blotch and flyspeck, as long as the fruit doesn't crack. These russet apples also store fairly well without refrigeration and can be most useful to the ecological applegrower who can believes that beauty is more than skin-deep.

HARVEST AND STORAGE

Know each apple variety's approximate ripening time in your area, and start checking fruit maturity a couple of weeks before the expected harvest date. Apples are generally ready to harvest when the ground color (the background color underneath the red or orange overcolor) turns from dark green to light green or pale yellow, and they twist off easily from the spur. When some fruit seem ripe, taste them to be sure.

Some varieties tend to drop their fruit before they're completely ripe, especially if the ground is dry or the fruit are pest-infested, so give those varieties special care, and pick them a little early to prevent the apples from bruising when they fall.

The late apples must ripen fully on the tree or they'll always taste green, but they must be picked before the first frost or fruit will suffer damage. Since many late-storage apples aren't fit to eat straight off the tree, judge maturity by ground color and how easily the apples twist off. Stored in a root cellar or refrigerator, they'll keep you crunching till spring.

Brenda Olcott-Reid grows and writes about apples and other fruits in Chetopa, Kansas.

High Quality Apples That Resist Some Serious Diseases.

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