A note from Julie about our approach to growing apples:

For lots of reasons, we can’t grow apples the way most of the large orchards do. We simply don’t have the resources. But more importantly, we don’t want to grow the conventional way. We haven’t been here very long (less than three years), but I’ve seen enough to know what I don’t like.

It just doesn’t make sense to me to spray so many chemicals on the trees. Modern agriculture makes as much sense as modern medicine. If you get sick, take this pill. If you feel tired, take this pill. If you can’t sleep, take this pill. With agriculture it’s the same, with sprays instead of pills. It just doesn’t feel right. As an individual, I want to take care of myself so that I can defend myself against disease. As a grower, I want the same thing: I want to find a way to create an ecosystem that supports itself.

It took me a long time to find an approach that makes logical and emotional sense, but I finally did; it’s called permaculture. (Boy do I wish they’d coined a better word!) If you have read the Michael Pollan book Botany of Desire, you’ve read about this approach. It’s companion-planting on a grand scale.

The primary goal/concept is planned biodiversity. Biodiversity is like eating a wide array of foods. Monoculture is like only eating pizza. Pizza isn’t bad, per se. But eating only pizza would mean that you don’t get the range of nutrients your system needs to stay strong and healthy.

Planned biodiversity means that I want to introduce plants that will support one another. Apple trees belong to the Rose family. Other members of the Rose family are peaches, pears, plums, cherries, etc. Pests that like apples often like their relatives. So I’ll plant things like chestnuts and northern pecans, whose pest population is completely different.

Eventually, the orchard will look quite different. We may end up with a third of the apple trees we currently have. But growing amongst the apple trees will be nuts and berries and hops and loads of flowering things (bees have to eat all year, not just when I need the apples pollinated!)

Mark Shepard, a grower in Wisconsin who proudly calls himself a heretic, summarized things nicely in an email to me a while back. He said, “Nature requires no coddling and babying. Fertility, pest and disease control are all taken care of by natural processes, so why not imitate that model?”

A Word on Ugly Fruit

Most of you know and accept that organically grown fruit usually isn’t perfect looking. (It’s one of the things I love about our customers, really.) Well, for the next few years, our fruit is probably going to be uglier than you expect. Why? Because we’re taking the plunge and going 100% spray-free.

“But Julie,” you may protest, “there are tons of things you can spray that aren’t evil, nasty chemical doom, aren’t there?” Yes, my informed reader, there are things available to me that I can spray to keep the pests at bay. But going cold turkey allows us a little more financial room to start planting all the good things that will eventually keep the orchard healthy. Skipping the expense of a huge tractor and sprayer (not to mention expensive things to spray) will allow me to start planting the good stuff sooner.

In the meantime, I’m going to learn what I can about using beneficial insects like the excellent green lacewing and the always-popular ladybug to keep the nasty bugs away. For apple maggot (eeew! She said “maggot!”), I’m going to use sticky traps. But there won’t be much I can do about apple scab. It must be said that apple scab will not hurt you. Apple scab will not diminish the tastiness of the apple. But apple scab will make a lot of the fruit look ugly. No small part of why you pay such a premium for picture-perfect apples in your local supermarket is the expense of fighting apple scab.

Oh, I’ll buy a chopper and chop up all the scabby leaves in the fall (because that can help a lot), and I might even put urea down after I’ve done the chopping, because that breaks the leaves down more. But until the permaculture is really up and running, we’ll have a fair amount of ugly fruit. The good news is that Little Dog apples are now 100% spray free, and you’ll know when you’re eating them that these apples are contributing to a healthier planet for all of us. And that’s really sweet!