Debbie Aller and Mario Miranda collecting a soil sample at an orchard site with ideal soil structure – abundant pores and channels – to carry both water and air (please notice the soil with excellent structure/stability to promote tree growth). Photo: Lake Ontario Fruit Program
By Mario Miranda
Healthy soil just does a better job of producing healthy and productive fruit trees (the easiest, most dramatic way to improve any apple orchard is to keep/maintain/improve/nourish its soil): During the last two years a group of Cornell extension educators and scientists have been collecting paired soil samples from a healthy/productive/high fruit quality block versus an underperforming/low productive/low fruit quality block.
In some cases, we have just compared very different fruit production areas of the same block or ‘orchard zones’ with a minimum of four rows. Through this long-term experimental approach, we are trying to understand why a mature apple block or zone can perform better than another block located at a very close proximity.