Any soft fruit growers out there?

sahara

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Somerset
Hi @Veryfruity , I have some cherry trees in the farm garden that despite fruiting up as green premature berries then seen to shrivel up and die. So this year I am keen that it doesn't happen.
At the moment the tree has plenty of premature green berries,
20200520_113555.jpg

Something is eating the leaves,
20200518_101923.jpg

I also have quite a lot of what I think are aphids
20200520_113527.jpg

So my questions are;
What's causing the shredding and is it serious?
Is it the aphids that cause the complete loss of fruit on the tree?
What if anything can I treat them or the trees with?
Lots of questions, so any help / guidance gratefully received.

Cheers, Sahara.
 

Veryfruity

Member
Defiantly aphids, black cherry aphid, kill em! These really weaken the tree, and may cause some of the fruit shedding.

Cherries need a fair bit of winter chilling, 700 odd hours below 7C . If they don’t get enough cold they will flower fully but the fruit won’t set, and that they does set goes pink at 10mm and drops. Did you have a cold winter?

As the cherries redden they may be prey to drosophila Suzuki ( SWD) Are they inhabited ?
 

sahara

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Somerset
Thanks for your help @Veryfruity , sounds like a bit of a combo of not a very cold winter, and then the aphids.

I will talk to our agronomist to see what I can use on the tree, If I waft the knapsack lance about a bit hopefully it will mimic an atomiser sprayer!
 

Veryfruity

Member
I will talk to our agronomist to see what I can use on the tree, If I waft the knapsack lance about a bit hopefully it will mimic an atomiser sprayer!
If you’re using a knapsack to spray, try your best to make the noise of an orchard sprayer, a sort of jet engine noise, it scares em off !

We spray an aphicide coming out of winter as the flower buds swell, and this with copper, is THE key intervention.
 

Muddyroads

Member
NFFN Member
Location
Exeter, Devon
Use pressure compensated tape.
What do you want to know and on what veg?
Starting field scale veg in a small way. Currently have half an acre of leeks (15 x 165 metres rows) going up to 2.5 acres. Also putting savoy, romanesco and kale in to a total of 6.5 acres. Field is seriously dry now and wondering if I can put some kind of drip pipe or tape along the rows to at least get some moisture into the soil. Obviously I can only do small areas at a time, but at least get plants rooted as I’ve got staggered planting times over the next couple of months.
 

Kidds

Member
Horticulture
Starting field scale veg in a small way.
The crops you mention are more usually watered by travelling overhead sprinklers and I would look into that first.
If you want to use tape I would expect at least two tapes per bed (assuming you are on something like 72 inch beds). I guess you are using mains supply and this will be your limiting factor. You will only be able to do something like 6 tapes at a time. I would go for 100m runs working from the middle (unless on a serious slope) You will need a timing system that switches one batch of 6 tapes on at a time sequentially (sounds complicated but not really).

It is quite costly to set up and very time consuming. It is questionable if it is worth it on those crops and you can be sure it will rain as soon as you turn it on.
Mains water is very cheap to buy but becomes surprisingly expensive when you use it for irrigation.
 

Muddyroads

Member
NFFN Member
Location
Exeter, Devon
The crops you mention are more usually watered by travelling overhead sprinklers and I would look into that first.
If you want to use tape I would expect at least two tapes per bed (assuming you are on something like 72 inch beds). I guess you are using mains supply and this will be your limiting factor. You will only be able to do something like 6 tapes at a time. I would go for 100m runs working from the middle (unless on a serious slope) You will need a timing system that switches one batch of 6 tapes on at a time sequentially (sounds complicated but not really).

It is quite costly to set up and very time consuming. It is questionable if it is worth it on those crops and you can be sure it will rain as soon as you turn it on.
Mains water is very cheap to buy but becomes surprisingly expensive when you use it for irrigation.
Thank you. I should have said that I’m on a borehole, so the sprinkler I’m using at the moment is running off the supply to a water trough in the field. The sprinkler is putting 3-4 ml/hour but it strikes me that I’m watering an awful lot of soil between the rows which will no doubt provide me with a cracking crop of weeds. If something like tape or porous pipe would place enough water next to the plants it could be more efficient and keep weed growth down. Looking online, the tape looks relatively cheap. Roughly what would the additional costs be?
 

Kidds

Member
Horticulture
Roughly what would the additional costs be?
You need something along these lines
Access Irrigation page has most if not all you need. Shop around a bit, some places are cheap for some of the bits and charge insane amounts for other bits.
Use cheap black 32mm thinwall pipe to get the water around your fields but won't stand traffic and kinks easy if you move it. Buried is best.
 
Spotted the OP on the day that it was posted and despite being a none-farming townie got to wondering, with our UK climate getting warmer, if any of you fruit growers are growing figs; or have considered doing so.
 

quavers

Member
Location
aberdeenshire
Why is soft fruit so tasteless?
My wife bought some strawberries. Ashamed to say from a supermarket and was rubbish. This was from a local fruit farm. It looked fantastic.

Was going to say it was like eating a neep. But a neeps quite tasty in my opinion.
you will have to have a trip over to oldmeldrum for combine parts and nip in past barra berries , great tasting strawberries , they have also a farm shop now where they have imported a machine from Italy that mixes the fruit from the farm with ice cream , they all ways have a queue but its well worth it ,
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,293
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top