Growing with growers since 1946
Sign In
Subscribe
Do the trees look a little tilted? They are. Wafler Farms of Wolcott, New York, finds that work and harvest platforms function better when the trees are tilted slightly away from the workers. In a system the Wafler family calls Tall Spindle Tip, the tops of each row are 10 feet apart but the trees are angled roughly 8 degrees in the opposite direction. The platforms move down every other row. (Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

Final IFTA tour stop: Grow to replace

February 28, 2019
As usual, the orchard tours were cold at the International Fruit Tree Association’s winter conference in Rochester, New York, attested to by the attire of Marcella Galeni Soares Rafael of Zillah, Washington, as she listened to tips about multileader pruning on Monday at Excelsior Farm, west of town. (Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

IFTA Heuser lecturer: Start with the problem

February 27, 2019
Lav Khot, a biological systems professor at Washington State University, leads a tour at the university’s Center for Precision and Automated Agriculture Systems in Prosser, Washington, in 2017. Khot and a team of collaborators have received a $300,000 New Innovator grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research to explore ways to reduce pesticide residues. (Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

New Innovator grant targets pesticide residue

February 26, 2019
Paul Wafler, left, is presented with the International Fruit Tree Association 2019 Outstanding Grower Award from Rod Farrow, president of the IFTA, on Monday, February 25. (Courtesy Sheri Nolan/IFTA)

IFTA bestows awards

February 25, 2019
Workers cut away fireblight infections in pear orchards on Friday, June 15, 2018, near Monitor and Cashmere in the Wenatchee Valley, Washington. Nearly everyone in the pear industry in the Wenatchee Valley, even workers who have been here 34 years, is calling 2018 the worst fireblight season they have seen. (Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

Managing fire blight for the conventional grower

February 21, 2019

Organic control options for fire blight

February 21, 2019
Scott Harper of the Clean Plant Center Northwest is asking stone fruit growers to be on the lookout for peach trees with premature yellowing, reddening and curling of leaves and dieback, such as this peach tree in Franklin County, Washington, in 2018. The symptoms could indicate Western X phytoplasma or pear decline phytoplasma.(Courtesy Alice Wright/Washington State University)

Phytoplasmas found in stone fruit

February 15, 2019
A patchwork of cover crops blankets a Sunnyside, Washington, vineyard floor during 2017 trials by Washington State University researcher Tarah Sullivan, exploring the connection between soil microbes and Concord grape vine chlorosis. (Courtesy Joan Davenport/Washington State University)

Digging into soil bacteria and chlorosis

February 14, 2019
From left, Jason Matson, Tye Fleming and Scott Crawford spoke about how to reduce risk through horticultural techniques during a panel at the Washington State Tree Fruit Association’s annual meeting in December in Yakima, Washington. (TJ Mullinax/Good Fruit Grower

Risk reduction has its rewards – Video

February 13, 2019

BC Tree Fruits restructures

February 7, 2019