Peach Update!

Last year I started part of my project with some mature trees that were already planted at the farm.  The second half of my project requires young trees and we finally got those planted this Fall.  In this part of the study we will be able to compare nitrogen rates and nitrogen application forms (granular versus fertigation), along with leaching potential of the different rates from a very early stage of growth.  We will eventually be able to compare production rates and quality on these trees but the biggest advantage of the young trees is the ability to measure leaching.  With measuring leaching we are observing how much nitrogen is actually being used by the tree and how much is being lost through the soil profile.  One of the concerns with increasing the nitrogen rate on peaches in Florida is that the tree may not use that extra nitrogen and that extra may end up in the water table as it filters through the soil.  Since we can't see the water table directly we can hopefully monitor the movement and estimate how much is being lost among the treatments.  We don't want to do this with the mature trees because we don't have a good way to apply fertigation and a big part of the study is comparing the two application types (granular and fertigation).  In order to accomplish this we have installed a whole new orchard, including irrigation and injectors for fertigation and then planted our young trees!  In order to do everything we felt necessary we have planted 200 trees total!

Baby trees all in a row.

These are the sprinklers for each tree.

Hard to see but here is all 200 new trees!

I will be starting the second year of research with our mature trees and when we went to check on them earlier this week I was really surprised to see some of them already blooming!  There weren't enough blooming to be concerned about the upcoming freeze (yep, we got down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit here for two nights!) but it was still crazy to see peaches bloom in January!

While it is still down time as far as production goes, there is a lot coming up to do for the project and hopefully I can do a better job keeping you all up to date!