Thinning & Harvest Mechanization

Thinning & Harvest Mechanization

Thinning & Harvest Mechanization. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

It was a big year in the tree fruit industry. No doubt about it. Borderline on the unmanageable. If all the different factors and the sun and the moon and the stars had not aligned, it could have been a real mess. Karen Lewis with WSU Extension says that thinning and harvest mechanizations would definitely help.

LEWIS: If you are a stone fruit grower and if you already bloom thin because you know that size is the prize and you need to get that bloom off and if you are not considering some form of mechanical thinning at bloom, I don’t know what else I can tell you because it is a win-win deal.

Obviously thinning creates less competition and allows for greater size and some of the new mechanical string thinners work extremely well. But...

LEWIS: We ended up with some blank wood issues, we over thinned a lot of cherries and so people were a little nervous so the following year we looked at dormant timing at bud swell and we were able to reduce about 20-25% of that crop at dormant time so I think that is an option maybe for one of these very quick, high RPM type of thinners.

WSU has also developed a couple of hand-held thinners.

LEWIS: We couldn’t get into all these canopies with the Darwin so we were funded to develop a handheld device so we could plunge in and get into canopies that we can’t reach with the tall spindles. we certainly can remove bloom.

More tomorrow.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. 

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