For students, going apple picking is a delightful seasonal pastime. For Cold Spring Orchard, though, apple farming is much more than simply a fall festivity.
Cold Spring Orchard was established as a University of Massachusetts research facility in 1962 after the college’s original orchard was demolished for the construction of Orchard Hill dormitories. The UMass orchard and farm stand operates with the help of students year-round to reform traditional apple farming methodology. Farmers cultivate experimental trees to test groundbreaking agricultural processes on rows of research trees, which are distinguished from public picking trees by color-coded ribbons.
“Technology has made the apple a better apple,” Cold Spring education coordinator Janet Foy said of the discoveries made by research.
Through scientific experiment, new techniques have been developed to assist apple farmers with effective planting, pesticide spraying and harvesting.
“You can (now) do in a morning what would take you three days to do,” Foy said.
Among the new technologies that Foy referenced is the system of Integrated Pest Management. In the past, apple trees were sprayed for pests once every seven days, a laborious practice that killed beneficial pests as well as harmful ones. Now, with IPM, the orchard can adjust its spray schedule based on the conditions.
Currently, trees are adorned with electronic bug zappers that stun bugs, count them and transmit the information to a computer. From this data, along with the consideration of external factors such as weather, growers can estimate when pest eggs will hatch to determine the optimum time for spraying. Modern IPM technology limits cultivators’ frustration of having to spray every day and the harm done to crops by excessive spraying.
Another form of innovation on the farm is spraying to prevent black spots on apples caused by calcium deficiency. Apples don’t always extract enough calcium from the soil, making them less appetizing in appearance. Fortunately, Cold Spring sprays calcium chloride on the trees biweekly to promote favorable apple nutrition.
Cold Spring’s experimental practices are not organic, a fact that farmers and consumers alike can look past to receive bountiful yields. Freshman Jetta Cook remembers struggling while working on an organic apple farm over the summer.
“Apples are very fickle trees,” she recalled, “and it seemed like we put in a lot of effort for not a lot of apples.”
To ensure a generous harvest with healthy apples, Cold Spring monitors not only IPM and calcium intake, but also the amount of apples per cluster on trees. There are normally five to seven apples per cluster – the more apples in a cluster the fewer nutrients each apple receives. Too many apples per cluster can result in cramped, undersized apples, and in extreme cases can become the size of crab apples.
Growers at Cold Spring try to limit the growth to one apple per cluster. In addition, trees are pruned to arrange for optimum sun exposure, giving the apples a better color.
The science of apple farming is especially prevalent during harvest. To decide the prime stage of ripeness, farmers drip an iodine solution onto sliced-open test apples. The solution turns the apple starch gray; white color signifies that the apple starch has turned into sugar. An apple ready for plucking is neither too gray nor too white in color.
In regards to the physical harvesting of apples, picking is made easier by shortening the height of trees to accommodate the ability of farmers. Wild apple trees can grow as tall as 40 feet tall, which is an inconvenience to those who must climb to retrieve the fruit. At Cold Spring, rootstocks dictate the height of the tree.
Foy said ingenuity on the apple orchard benefits everyone – from those who work hard year-round running the orchard, to those who make the annual autumn trip to fill their bags.
“This is a happy place. The breeze is here, the apples are here,” she said.
As for UMass students, trips to Cold Spring are gaining popularity according to Foy.
“Our school group tours have increased significantly in the past five years and we have also been receiving more publicity.”
Nicole DeFeudis can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Cold Spring sprayed its apples seven days a week in the past, credited Cold Spring with creating technology to combat black spots, that cramped, undersized apples can become crab apples, and that Cold Spring uses technology placed on the top of trees to stunt their growth. Those mistakes have since been corrected.
