A Grower’s Guide to Organic Apples

NYS IPM Type: Fruits IPM Organic GuideNYS IPM Type: Organic GuideMany New York fruit growers have expressed interest in producing for the organic sector, where prices are relatively high and demand is increasing. However, reliable science-based information for commercial organic tree fruit production in cool humid regions such as the Northeastern United States has been difficult to find. This production guide compiles and distills information from university research trials, making the essential elements for organic apple production available to growers, extension agents, crop consultants, researchers, and others who desire to produce organic apples. The goal of this guide is to help growers produce the highest quality fruit possible, utilizing organic techniques and systems

More Minor Fruits

This is the More Minor Fruits chapter in Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home. It features information and instruction for the home fruit grower.Choosing cultivars, propagation, site selection, planting, trellising, persimmons, pawpaws, mulberries, juneberries, highbush cranberries, Cornelian cherries, beach plums, buffaloberries, quinces, fertilization, harvest.Garden-Based Learning, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

Tree Fruits

This is the Tree Fruit chapter in Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home. It features information and instruction for the home tree fruit grower.Choosing cultivars, rootstocks, nursery stock, planting, managing grass and weeds, fertilizing, pruning and training basics, training and pruning young apple and pear trees, pruning bearing apple and pear trees, rejuvenating old apple and pear trees, pruning and training cherry and plum trees, pruning and training peaches, thinning fruit, diseases and insects, harvest.Garden-Based Learning, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

Hardy Kiwifruit

This is the Hardy Kiwifruit chapter in Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home. It features information and instruction for the home fruit grower.Choosing cultivars, propagation, site selection and soil preparation, planting, trellising, pruning and mulching, fertilization, harvest.Garden-Based Learning, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

Strawberries

This is the Strawberries chapter in Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home. It features information and instruction for the home fruit grower.Choosing cultivars, buying plants, site selection, growing methods, planting and early care, managing your planting, diseases and pests, day-neutral strawberries, harvest.Garden-Based Learning, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

Grapes

This is the Grape chapter in Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home. It features information and instruction for the home grape grower.Choosing cultivars, purchasing or propagating vines, site selection, planting and early care, fertilizing, pruning and training young vines, pruning mature vines, pruning neglected vines, training vines to an arbor, diseases and insects, harvest, seedless table grapes.Garden-Based Learning, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

What Do Unions Do for Economic Performance?

Twenty years have passed since Freeman and Medoff's What Do Unions Do? This essay assesses their analysis of how unions in the U.S. private sector affect economic performance - productivity, profitability, investment, and growth. Freeman and Medoff are clearly correct that union productivity effects vary substantially across workplaces. Their conclusion that union effects are on average positive and substantial cannot be sustained, subsequent evidence suggesting an average union productivity effect near zero. Their speculation that productivity effects are larger in more competitive environments appears to hold up, although more evidence is needed. Subsequent literature continues to find unions associated with lower profitability, as noted by Freeman and Medoff. Unions are found to tax returns stemming from market power, but industry concentration is not the source of such returns. Rather, unions capture firm quasi-rents arising from long-lived tangible and intangible capital and from firm-specific advantages. Lower profits and the union tax on asset returns leads to reduced investment and, subsequently, lower employment and productivity growth. There is little evidence that unionization leads to higher rates of business failure. Given the decline in U.S. private sector unionism, I explore avenues through which individual and collective voice might be enhanced, focusing on labor law and workplace governance defaults. Substantial enhancement of voice requires change in the nonunion sector and employer as well as worker initiatives. It is unclear whether labor unions would be revitalized or further marginalized by such an evolution

Preplant soil compost or fumigation, rootstock disease resistance or tolerance, and previous tree or grass rows as management factors in apple replant disease

When orchards are replanted to maintain productivity, apple replant disease (ARD) often causes major problems. Soil fumigants sometimes control ARD, but biological and cultural alternatives are needed. This project evaluated disease-resistant apple rootstocks and preplant soil treatments with compost and a fumigant as methods to improve apple tree growth and productivity in a replanted orchard

Multi-level Comparisons of Organic and Integrated Fruit Production (IFP) Systems for 'Liberty' Apple in a New York Orchard

Toward Sustainability Foundatio

An Organic Apple Production System for New York

Several NY apple growers have indicated they see a marketing opportunity for NY grown organic apples (both fresh and processed products) and have requested a Cornell University led effort to develop a system of organic apple production for NY. In 2002 we studied apple maggot management, fruit thinning, and weed control tactics that are organically approved. We have evaluated an organic approved insecticides (Surround) for apple maggot control using 2 application methods. We also evaluated an experimental antagonist for apple maggot control