Techniques in Growing Organic Apples

Apples have been a staple fruit of America since it was brought in by trade routes from Kazakhstan. This fruit have been used in different food and beverage preparations such as apple pie and apple cider. The growing of apples has now become a $ 1.7 billion dollar industry in America and most of these apples are grown in large scale orchards all across the country. 

Growing organic apples is not an easy task since there are different diseases and insect pests that attack them throughout the year. The more common diseases that attack apples are the apple scab, powdery mildew, and cedar-apple rust.  Apples are also attacked by insects such as the codling moth, apple maggot, and the curculio. Because of this, large scale orchards resort to the use of pesticides and insecticides in order to control these damaging pests and diseases.

However, it is a misconception that in order to produce blemish-free apples, an apple-grower must use a huge amount of pesticides and fungicides. This is not the case anymore as many of the smaller orchards of the country have resorted to organic means of apple growing. Here are some of the basic techniques that they use in growing organic apples.

Scab is the most serious disease that can affect apples. This disease is fungal in nature and can cause the apple to have blemishes in the form of green spots which darken and harden over time. Fortunately, apple varieties developed through cooperative breeding by universities such as Purdue, have become resistant to scab disease. Choosing a disease-resistant apple variety to grow in an orchard is the first step in growing organic apples.

However, choosing a disease-resistant variety is not enough. To grow organic and blemish free apples, the orchard owner must also take a look at the rootstock of the apple. Different rootstocks would give different tree heights. Choosing a rootstock that would produce the shortest trees would make the tree bear fruits earlier and produce the larger fruits.  It should be noted however, that the rootstocks of shorter trees are not long enough to get water deep in the ground and should therefore be irrigated regularly.

The last technique for growing organic apples is to bag the maturing fruits with brown paper bags.  Bagging the fruits will prevent insects from attacking the fruits. Also, bagging the fruits prevents further infection of fungi and thus making the apples blemish-free upon harvest.

Growing organic apples is not a hard thing to do. Orchard growers need only to know the proper techniques to do so.