Making Your Own Recommendations: Peach Trees
NOTE: The information in the following article is from Francis Cornish of Woodham, Ontario.
In April of 2017, Francis Cornish, Paul Campbell, and Larry Webb organized a Growers meeting for women in the Amish community of St. Helens, Ontario. It was well attended and a very productive meeting. One woman-Mrs. LizzieAnn Shetler-raised a question about peach trees she had replanted three years prior. The trees had produced only small peaches.
LizzieAnn and her husband Ed had used the Growers recommendations for peach trees for a year, but had seen no change. Meanwhile, their son Tobie had been using the program, including limestone and GMS, for a year before his parents in their greenhouses and on his own garden, which is located right next to his parents'. After a year or so of witnessing Tobie's use of the Growers Program, they began to use it themselves in their garden, trees, and flower beds. Still, they were having problems with their peach trees which led LizzieAnn to stray from the Growers recommendations for fruit trees and try her own methods out.
They had already limed around the trees with high-calcium limestone and 25 pounds of gypsum. She began to spray the trees with a mixture of 1 gallon clean water, 2 ounces of GMS, and a 1/2 teaspoon of Growers Soil Conditioner (GSC). She foliar sprayed the trees 2-3 times a week, a rate vastly higher than what Growers recommends. Ed told her she was overdoing it and would kill the trees, but the exact opposite happened. Not only did the trees survive, but they harvested 11/2 bushels of well-sized, tasty, and juicy peaches. Clearly, the trees were under a lot of stress, and they therefore responded very well to the large volumes of GMS and GSC used. This is also further proof to the cleanliness of GMS as no other fertilizer could get such great results at such high volumes without damaging the plant.
The recommendations in the green book are generally accepted and tested rates and practices out together over many years, but by no means are the only way to use the program. As evidenced by LizzieAnn's experiment, tinkering with the program to fit your own operation can be well worth it. This is one reason why Growers people need to be critical thinkers who are willing to take some risks to help their operation reach its optimum production. For those wishing to tinker with the program, we would suggest starting with a relatively small portion of the operation in order to minimize risk while still seeing results.
NOTE: For the 2018 season, LizzieAnn Shetler sprayed her trees once a week with the above mix. The trees were loaded with quality peaches.
This is an excerpt from the Early Fall Growers Solution (2019) written by Zach Smith.
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