10.  Why can I never remember the last verse of Woody Guthrie's "Dust Bowl Blues"?

9.  What time did you turn the pump on?

8.  Which sections are we irrigating tonight?

7.  When are you going to be done with that pump, I'm gonna need it back.

6.  Did you backflush the lines this morning?

5.  How long should we extend the suction hose?

4.  "How in the heck can I wash my neck if it aint gonna rain no more"

3.  What time did you turn the pump on? (we'd been over this one a lot)

2.  There's a chance we're gonna get some (rain) tomorrow.

1.  When the #&*@%! is it going to rain?

Glad to finally have a little rain!  Can I order a little more for next week?

FB

Ok, so I'm exaggerating a little.  Regardless, people wanna know which peaches are sweeter: yellow fleshed peaches or white fleshed peaches?

Peaches come in many shapes and size.  The two most distinguishing features are yellow fleshed or white fleshed.  Peaches can also be clingstone or freestone, but we've got that debate all wrapped up in this entry (link, "Ask A Grower III").  For the purposes of being thorough, I'll add that a few new peach varieties are listed as yellow fleshed and sub acid.  This not withstanding, the main difference between a yellow peach and a white peach is the amount of acid in that peach.

Yellow-fleshed peaches have a rosy red cheek over a soft yellow background color.  These are your "standard" peach varieties - that peach flavor you grew up with.  They are very juicy, very sweet, and have a good acidic, peachy "bite".  If you were using your peaches paired with something sweet like cream, ice cream and they like, you'd definitely go for these peaches.  Yellow peaches are often preferred for baking pies, cobblers, and other similar deserts.

White peaches are commonly a darker, redder cheeked fruit whose background color is a soft, creamy white.  These too are sweet, juicy treats.  The white peaches, contrary to the yellow peaches, will not have that "bite" - that tangy, acidic counterpoint to the sweetness of the peach juices.  Conversely, if you are mixing peaches with a more acidic yogurt - plain yogurt, or a mildly acidic vanilla, you may find you prefer white peaches in these instances.

So stop skirting the question, guy!  Which are sweeter?  Well, in the interests of full disclosure, I've always been a "yellow peach guy".  That's the side of the debate I fall on.  White peaches, by virtue of their lack of "bite", will seem sweeter to many.  To me, they're a terrific mix-in after a few weeks of munching my favorite yellow peaches.  And they are terrific if you are pairing them with a little acid.  If you were measuring total sweetness by total sugars, both kinds of peaches would be similar.  The best answer is that the sweetness of a peach is determined more by where it's grown, when it was picked, where it was on the tree, and which variety it came from than white or yellow.  If you think the lack of acid makes them taste sweeter, you're probably right.  If you think yellow peaches are just as sweet as white peaches, but with a little acidic "kick", then you're probably right too!  Try both and choose for yourself!

There's a frequently vague answer to a frequently asked question!

Picture, if you will, another hot day at Three Springs Fruit Farm.  Temperatures are nearing 100 and you have workers to check on before it gets too hot to continue.  My Uncle John found himself in such a situation earlier this week.  You're driving up to the big Honeycrisp block in Gardners to check up on somebody when you're faced with this image (left).  The tops of your trees are dying!  Just the tops, just one row.  Your heart sinks and you start thinking what you might have done wrong.  Is it fireblight?  Mildew?  You see the end post of the trellis is split from top to bottom and you wonder - did someone

These trees got fried by a lightning strike!  AC/DC might liken it to being "Thunderstruck".  Either way, it's the only solution for this anomoly.  The row is at the top of the hill (shortest distance for lightning), it's isolated to only one row, and it shattered every support pole and bamboo conduit in the row.  The singed leaves are isolated to the places closest to that high tensile wire.  There are no signs of impact on any of the split support poles - instead, they look like they were split by the maul-weilding cousin of Thor himself; right down the middle, vertically!  Here are more pictures documenting this oddity!  These Honeycrisp trees are going to be stunted for life.  It's only a bit of consolation to have an interesting story to go along with it.

Peaches are on everyone's mind as we delve into the first pickings of the season.  Curiosity with these fuzzy summer treats

"Is there a way for me to determine if a peach is freestone or cling just by looking at it?" - asks Kelly "Miss Peach" G. of Washington DC (@kgdc1)

Great question from a true peach enthusiast!  The short answer is no, there is no sound way other than to know the variety and know its tendency.  Let's examine things a little closer.

The difference between clingstone peaches and freestone peaches is little more than what you would think.  For clingstone peach varieties, the flesh of the peach will cling to the stone (or pit), making it more difficult to remove.  Freestone peaches separate easily from the pit, making it easier to pull out once the fruit is sliced in half.  Some peach varieties, as we'll discuss later, advertise themselves as "semi-cling".  As much as I'd like to tell you, our valued customers and random web watchers, that "this peach is semi-cling, not clingstone", the truth of the matter is so very few semi-cling peaches ever separate from the pit that you might as well not even make the distinction.

At the time of this writing, at the start of the 2010 peach season, our earliest ripening peach, our 'Baby Juble' peaches are clingstone.  We have several earlier varieties planted who will also be cling.  'Rising Star' and 'Sentry' are next, both reportedly "semi-clingstone" and you remember what that means.  'Red Star' you will get a few more freestone peaches than other "semi-clings" but our first true freestone peach is 'John Boy'.  From that point forward, all of our peaches are freestone.  'White Lady' is our first freestone white peach.  We grow a mid-season clingstone called "Baby Gold #5" to make our canned peaches.  If you ever had a notion to can some for yourself (to deploy some good rural verbiage), you can special request some Baby Gold #5's from us!

So which is better?  Well, everyone likes freestone better, mostly because they like to pull out the pit.  Truthfully, there's nothing about a freestone peach that tastes better than a clingstone.  If one peach tastes better than another, it's because the variety is good, not necessarily because it fell off the pit.  'Rising Star' and 'Baby Gold #5' are two of my favorite peaches for flavor and they are clings, but I understand the preference folks have for freestone. 

So to wrap things up, no, you cannot tell a clingstone from a freestone merely by a peach's appearance.  You'd need to "Ask a Grower" to learn about the peaches he or she brought to market!  Thanks for the question, enjoy the peaches, and keep those questions coming!

-Farmer Ben

When it comes right down to it, you need to have a passion for growing to succeed in agriculture.  On our farm, not only are we passionate about growing your food, we also take a great deal of pride in the methods used to grow that food.  We strive everyday to provide food for our customers that is not only nutritious, healthy, and safe, but measures up to our strict standards of quality.

To accomplish this, we go the extra mile to keep ourselves educated on the newest and "greenest" growing practices available.  We use practices including Pheromone Mating Disruption, biological control, and bioremediation to reduce our impact on the environment.  

So is that organic?  Well, all of those methods I mentioned are used in organic tree fruit production.  While our environment is well-suited to tree fruit agriculture, it isn't altogether ideal from a disease management perspective.  The rains that nourish our trees also leave lingering droplets on the fruit and leaves - each one a potential environment for disease.  In arid, Western growing areas, growers pay for the water rights needed to irrigate their soils due to the lack of rain in those areas.  This irrigation is applied solely to the roots and the diseases Eastern growers struggle with rarely occur.  In our microclimate, these diseases have proven difficult to control organically.  Our best solution for maintaining good growing practices in our environment is Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

What is IPM?

To put it simply, IPM is a strategy for managing pests that considers every possible remedy to a pest problem, giving preference to those remedies with the fewest effects on the environment.  Integrated Pest Management is not limited to agricultural settings - the pests being managed can be everything from weeds in your garden, termites in the Public Library, to European Red Mites at Three Springs Fruit Farm.  IPM can be implemented to solve all of these pest problems and more.  

As IPM growers, the most important thing we do is scout and monitor for problems.  Systemically placed in tree branches all over our farm are over 80 pheromone traps that get checked every week.  The number of insects we catch each week is recorded and cross referenced to data that models the life cycle of these pests.  Only then do we make a calculated decision as to what strategy, if any, is the best.  Scouting is also done for additional insect species we don't trap as well as intensive disease monitoring.  Only when a problem exists do we begin to consider different methods to protect the quality of our crop.

As IPM teaches, we exhaust every alternative before any spray is applied.  For instance, each spring we place thousands of ties and dispensers that slowly release artificial insect pheromone into our orchards.  The result of this is thousands upon thousands of confused male insects who cannot find a female and mate, lower pest populations, and fewer sprays!  This tactic is called Pheromone Mating Disruption and its become the backbone of how we control insects at Three Springs Fruit Farm.

When sprays are necessary (as much as we wish it weren't so), we go to great lengths to choose products that have a minimal effect on the environment.  The products we prefer to spray do not persist in the environment and have a minimal effect on the natural enemies of the pests we try to control.  There are many insects and other creatures in our orchards willing to assist us in eliminating pests and we're happy to help them any way we can!  After years of choosing these reduced-risk products to spray, we discovered we had built a population of the mite predator T. Pyri.  These tiny insects are eager to eat as many harmful European Red Mites and Two-Spot Spider Mites as their bellies can hold.  So, for their benefit, we only use products that will not have an adverse effect on their population, even going as far as physically transferring them to blocks where more mites exist or their numbers were slow to catch on.

So whether it's using a green manure in place of fumigation or devloping existing populations of Ladybugs and Lacewings (pictured above), Three Springs remains committed to using IPM to provide the best produce to you and the healthiest agroecosystem in which to grow it.  Afterall, when it comes right down to it, it's our workplace we're talking about!

This video we shot for Crop Life America details many of the topics covered above!

Food Safety Concerns

Food Safety continues to be a topic of much debate as contaminants and recalls from large processing and handling facilities increase each year.  While the problem could to continue to be a non-issue for those who have embraced the buy local movement in agriculture here in the Eastern US, we've made an effort to be proactive about these concerns - gaining our certification in the USDA's GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) Program after passing a voluntary audit in 2008.

Further Reading:

Investigate further with some in-depth reading on growing practices in our Growing Greener Blog!

• Growing Greener: Pheromone Mating Disruption
• Growing Greener: Scouting & Monitoring
• Growing Greener: Low Toxicity Materials
  

Crop Life America wants to get the word out on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - a passion shared by all of us here at Three Springs Fruit Farm.  This seven minute video is shot during bloom season at the farm and gives you a close look at how IPM is performed in our pretty orchards.  Sorry, I think my bias came through there a bit at the end.

At the time this video was shot, we were under the impression we'd be at Bethesda on Saturdays.  Now we're at Silver Spring Farmers Market instead - the subject of the video posted below.  Good background tunes - I need to bribe the Silver Spring buskers down to our end of the market!  We've got yummy strawberries...

update (6/3/10)

Local Washington DC News 8 coverage of the FRESHFarm Markets Health & Human Services Market Grand Opening!

A recent study, as published in the medical journal "Pediatrics", cites childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides as a possible link to ADHD.  As strict IPM (Integrated Pest Management) growers, a pesticide such as an organophosphate would be one of the last things we would ever want to have to spray and as a result, I'm proud to say that no organophosphate is sprayed on our crops.  We would never sell anyone anything that wasn't safe to eat.  Since this topic is a point of discussion in light of current events, I found this to be a terrific opportunity to address the "whats" and "whys" of the spraying we occasionally must do to prevent the failure of our crops.

First, the most difficult things we need to control in our tree fruits are diseases, not insects.  We control many of our most damaging insect species with Pheromone Mating Disruption, the subject of an earlier blog.  When we spray an insecticide, it's only after the results of hours of scouting and insect data has been evaluated and some sort of remedy is required (another blog topic covered earlier).  

The determination of what to spray when an insecticide is required is not made on a whim.  It's made based on whatever species needs controlled.  We intend to control only this species and leave other species flourish when we can.  During three different summers home from college, I collected insect data at the Penn State Fruit Research and Extension Center Entomology Department.  The USDA and state funded program my wages supported was known as R.A.M.P (Risk Avoidance Mitigation Program).  This program was devoted to the very topic in the news now - finding alternatives to organophosphate insecticides (OPs).  OPs control insects because they are neurotoxins - they affect the central nervous system of the insects they control.  OP insecticides have the same effect on an agroecosystem as a cannon shot - every insect is susceptible to nerve damage when these products are sprayed, whether their population was high or low, whether those insects damaged our crop or protected it.  The newer products in the RAMP study might attack the insects' eggs or their ability to create an exoskeleton.  These materials, to complete the above analogy, are like a single arrow shot directly at the problem insect ("pest").  Working in the RAMP program, I learned there was a better way than these OPs.  As a volunteer in the RAMP program, my father learned how to use these softer pesticides (if an insecticide only works on eggs, you have to spray when those eggs are present - sometimes just a few weeks per year).  In short, the RAMP program proved that these greener insecticides could be as effective as OPs if they are applied correctly by folks who are studying their agroecosystem and can study the lifecycles of these pests.  Since these greener products are targeting specific insects, they pose very little threat to human health... I mean, except for the ones birthing offspring in external egg masses and the ones with exoskeletons, for example (if you meet this description, you might have a problem... and it'll have little to do with fruit).  Having learned from these experiences, we were able to move away from these compounds years ago.  While the OPs are still cheaper, we value the decreased toxicity of these products.  Because of this, we allow the species that are natural enemies of these pest to flourish in our orchards, including the biological control agents we spread a few years back... but that's another blog for a different day.

The results of our forward thinking approach is that we can confidently tell all of you that the fruits and veggies you buy from us are not sprayed with these harmful compounds.  As we continue to educate ourselves in the winter and partner with Penn State in their research, we'll continue to be ahead of the curve in terms of providing the safest fruits and vegetables you'll find anywhere.

Further reading on growing practices:

Growing Practices, IPM, and Food Safety

Growing Greener: Pheromone Mating Disruption

Growing Greener: Scouting and Monitoring

The story behind acquiring these plants, while not epic, was still a memorable one... for all the wrong reasons.  Brian and I had taken fired up our newly acquired box truck early in the morning of April 27th, setting a course for the secret location of these super secret plants.  For entertainment purposes, we'll refer to these plants as "Schnozberry bushes".

So, there we were cruising down I-81 South for to gather our blessed Schnozberry bushes when "thunk, boom, ^%$*", our beloved box truck staggered to a crawl in a puff of blue smoke.  Multiple attempts to revive our vehicle were unsuccessful, leading us limping defeated to the AAMCO Transmissions of Harrisonburg, VA.  Without belaboring the point too much, these people were as prepared to diagnose a box truck problem as they were a Saturn V rocket. 

The hours crept slowly by and we got no answers or progress on the problem.  Finally, convinced that these folks had no concern for how long Brian and I might be stranded, Dave decided to make a dash to retrieve us and, should we get lucky, the Schnozberry bushes. 

My father arrived in record time and picked up the two of us, leaving the incapable crew of AAMCO what little was left of the day to put their heads together and see if they could find the sparkplugs (I'm probably not exaggerating).  Our Schnozberry bush purveyors were open until 7pm and if we hustled, we could still retrieve the goods and (possibly, depending on their size) bring them home in his pickup truck.

It was then that fortune finally smiled on our stalwart band.  We winded our way through the Blue Ridge down to the secret location at which our Schnozberry bushes were kept - arriving with 10 minutes to spare.  We loaded them quickly and were soon backtracking through the mountains Northward.  Schnozberries in tow, we took cause for celebration when finally we reached civilization.  Shamelessly, the three road-weary travelers split equally six 9 oz. Ribeye steaks and made it home before 11pm - all in the same day.

We got the Schnozberries in the ground the very next day, in addition to the crunchberries (we'll call 'em) that had arrived by mail from parts elsewhere.  We have a few pics of the exciting proceedings.  Twitter followers and Facebook fans had already been made aware of these exploits.  Really, a few "tweeps" probably know what these guys are!  Everyone else has until at least next year until the schnozberries and crunchberries are ripe!

Farmer Ben