![]() A few decades ago, apple growers harvested 200 to 300 bushels of apples to the acre and about 25 bushels were the highest grade. Many more premium apples are produced in the new-style orchard, some experts say. The trellis-style orchard increases product and profit. But instead of some 300 trees to an acre spaced about 10 feet apart, trees are planted 18 to 24 inches apart and there are 1,500 or so trees to an acre. Yet, fertilizers can push this waifish modern tree to grow about 50 full-size apples, compared to as many as 300 or so on the old-style trees. They top out at about six to eight feet and are narrow, like a sapling. Many modern commercial apple trees are planted in what’s called a high density trellis system. ![]() “It’s now about making an apple like a grape, where you can walk by and pick the fruit right off the tree.” “People climbing apple trees and harvesting fruit with ladders, that’s gone,” Dr. What makes the ecology of the disease even more challenging to solve and address is that while a warmer world is a big part of the emerging problem, there are other factors that may be contributing to ideal conditions for an outbreak.Īpple orchards these days are a very different creature than they used to be. I have preservation orchards all over my property, hundreds of trees and I had never, ever seen it and all of a sudden I was seeing it.” “But 10 years ago, there was a big fire blight outbreak and suddenly it was here. Bunker, a long time apple grower farther north in Palermo, Maine, who identifies and preserves forgotten heirloom varieties across the country. “I never thought about fire blight, it was an issue for the South,” said John P. “It has the ability to kill a tree in a single season,” Mr. At warmer temperatures, fire blight is much more virulent. Honey bees and other insects then spread the disease as they pollinate apple blossoms. “But if it’s over 75, the conditions are right for the spore to enter the flower and get into the vascular system and it moves through the orchard faster.” “Fire blight enters the tree through the flower and if it lands on a flower in bloom with temps in the 60s, it can’t enter,” Mr. In May 2010, temperatures soared into the 80s. While May temperatures in this part of the Northeast used to rise more gradually and more uniformly, that dynamic started changing about 20 years ago and now some days in that month can spike into the 70s, Dr. Unusual spikes in temperature and more wet weather form ideal conditions for the bacterium. “We get a combination of weird and tragic weather, these days, variable and unpredictable,” Dr. Tower Hill had never seen fire blight during the bloom season, which provides a potent pathway for infection, until 2011. Orchards like the one at Tower Hill - there are fewer than a dozen in the country, experts say - have been likened to the Svarlbard Global Seed Vault, a concrete facility storing nearly one million seed species on the side of a mountain on a Norwegian island. The new tree grafts will grow for a year at an orchard in Maine, and then will be returned for planting in 2021. In an effort to keep the ancient lineage of the orchard from disappearing, the scionwood - cuttings from recent aboveground growth - was grafted onto new blight-resistant root stock. One of the varieties, the Roxbury Russet, dates back to the mid-17th century, and is believed to be the oldest apple variety cultivated in the United States. The orchard is dedicated to apples developed in this country, Europe and elsewhere long ago. Tower Hill Botanic Garden was forced in November to raze its orchard of 238 heirloom trees - two each of 119 antique varieties. The blight is spreading to places where it had not been seen before, into New York’s Champlain Valley and parts of Maine for example.
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