The sun shined bright and early on Day 2 of the International Fruit Tree Association’s 2023 summer tour of Nova Scotia, Canada.
On July 25, three busloads of IFTA members visited four orchards in the Annapolis Valley, where most of the province’s 5,000 acres of apples are grown.
The first stop was Lutz Family Farm, where six generations have been farming since the 1860s. Larry and Janice Lutz, their son-in-law, Cassian Ferlatte, and son, Sam Lutz, currently grow 140 acres of apples and peaches. They also have an on-farm nursery that produces 10,000 to 20,000 trees annually for their farm. Their main varieties are Honeycrisp, Minneiska (marketed as SweeTango) and Ambrosia, with club and traditional varieties filling out the crop mix. During the tour, they discussed thinning and Ambrosia production and pruning.
The second stop was Crisp Growers, owned by 14 apple-growing families and the Scotian Gold cooperative. When the owners acquired the farm in 2013, they aggressively modernized and replaced older trees with high-density plantings. There are currently more than 250 acres of apples, mostly Honeycrisp but also Ambrosia, Minneiska, Gala and Rave. At Crisp Growers, the IFTA visitors saw the AgBot autonomous sprayer in action, manufactured by Dutch company Hol Spraying Systems. They also heard from Vivid Machines, a Canadian company that manufactures vehicle-mounted digital camera systems for precision crop load management.
The next stop was Spurr Brothers Farms, a fifth-generation family farm that grows apples, onions, carrots and other fruits and vegetables for direct consumption at their farm market and U-pick operations. The family recently started producing hard cider and built a new farm market and tap room in 2022. During the tour, grower and family member Lisa Jenereaux discussed the farm’s V-trellis pears, while soil expert Keith Fuller talked about replant disorder, mulching and fumigation.
The final stop was Wohlgemuth Farms, where the Wohlgemuth family grows 90 acres of Honeycrisp, Minneiska, Gala, Ambrosia and Rave. During the final stop, speakers discussed results from an NC-140 Gala rootstock trial and a pneumatic defoliation trial. The tour also saw an equipment display from Eastern Manufacturing Equipment.
Check future issues of Good Fruit Grower for more in-depth reporting from the Nova Scotia tour.
—by Matt Milkovich
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