John KempfRegenerative Agriculture Entrepreneur

Regrowing A Cherry Orchard

20 Apr 2016 · 4 min

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3:41

A walk through Siomeg orchard shows how different management practices transformed freeze-damaged cherry trees. The AEA-managed block is projected to yield 10-14 tons compared to the standard block, using compost, mulch, soil stimulants, and specialized foliar and fertigation programs on identical soil and trees.

Questions this video answers

November

10 to 14 tons

Rejuvinate SeaShield and OP8

Year 1: AEA foliar program only; Year 2: adopted full AEA program (soil, fertigation, foliar); current is the second year of full AEA.

Chapters

Foreign. We're standing at the Siomeg orchard here. And this is a block of Regina that you can see all around us here that was severely damaged by the freeze that occurred in November. This block that we're in here that was damaged has been managed under our standard program that we follow here at Omeg Orchards. We're looking across a draw over at the other side there and on that ridge below the pine trees to the left and behind those pine trees going up over as far as you can see, that's our AEA trial block. And at that block we follow a full AEA program for our ground management, our fertigation and our foliar sprays. And that block has no damage. This block we had to restart these trees over again. So we'll go there next. So we went from no crop at sea Omega orchard for the next three years where we were at, we'll be growing tree, we'll be regrowing all that canopy. And now we come down to this orchard and we have the potential for a 10 to 14 ton crop. Just through nutritional differences. As best you can guess. I don't need to guess. I can say the only difference between this orchard and that orchard, it's the same soil type, same slope, same elevation, same age tree, same variety is the management that we're doing here, the AEA management. The other thing I want to point out is, and this is a. This is a sign of a lot of vigor. See all the shoot extension we see here? So we have all. We have shoots growing along this branch. That's considered an excellent indicator of the vigor and strength in the tree, the energy level of the tree. And where we see this, then there'll be fruit at the base of these shoots and those cherries will be really big, really desirable. Cherries that are fruited on the base of one year old wood are considered really advantageous. A couple of the highlights of what we've done here as far as soil management. We've applied compost and mulch to the ground here, we've applied a variety of soil stimulant sprays including rejuvenate seashield. And then there was residual herbicide damage here affecting the trees or damaging the trees rather. So we applied OP8 and a couple of other products to the soil here. Then these trees received the full AEA foliar program and a fertigation program as well. Since what this is the. This will be the third year, this will be the second year of the full program, the first year. This is the third year of us working with AEA here. The first year we just did an AEA foliar program. The second year we adopted the full AEA program, which was soil fertigation and foliar. And now this is the second. This will be the second year of U.S. doing a full AEA program. So this is after one year of the full AEA program. And I should also note that we were going to remove this block. We were going to take this block out. It was so bad when we started with AEA here. And so this block started significantly behind the block we were just at, but yet it's doing really, really good.