Our motto is “growing quality local produce responsibly,” which includes continually modifying and updating our management practices. Every year we work to fine tune our practices and systems to conserve soil and resources on the land that we farm. We use organic practices such as crop rotation, cover crops, cultivation, hand weeding, and organic sprays (when necessary) for our vegetable production.
Orchard management is an iterative process and we continue to try to improve our methods to meet our goal of farming responsibly.
With the apple and pear orchard we use an integrated pest management system. Iowa is a tough place to have an organic orchard with the rain and humidity. Of course this is one reason why our apples have such great flavor. To manage the tough growing conditions we have a weather station that is hooked to software that models our risk of fungal and bacterial diseases and we use lures to monitor pest pressures. This insures that we are spraying only when disease/pest pressure meets a maximum threshold. We use conventional sprays in the spring to manage the increased fungal pressure during the rainy season and some pests. We then transition from using conventional sprays to organic sprays after the fruit has set on the trees (early June). However, this transition sometimes happens a few weeks after fruit sets, depending if it is still cool and/or wet (perfect temperature for fungus). Also, over the past three years we have struggled with Japanese Beetles in July/August. They are mostly attracted to certain apple varieties, so if we do need to spray we can be selective rather than apply an orchard-wide pesticide. One way we are trying to combat summer pests is to encourage beneficial insects in perimeter native prairie plantings. After the apples are picked we wash them in an organic solution (peroxide and vinegar). We do not dip our apples in a post-harvest fungicide dip or wax our apples.