Warm Belly Farm focuses its growing efforts on a few specialty crops such as high-density apples, hydroponic strawberries, honeyberries, and cut flowers. They sell their produce through their pick-your-own operations, garden center, on site-farm stand, local farmer’s markets, and some wholesale grocery.

Warm Belly Farm is split across two locations in Cottage Grove and Fort Atkinson. The Cottage Grove location hosts Warm Belly Farm’s garden center, pick-your-own hydroponic strawberries, cut flower operation, and is the main location for events and agritourism activities. The Fort Atkinson location houses about nine acres of high-density apples and half an acre of honeyberries and offers pick-your-own apples from mid-August through October, along with a small farm stand and shaded picnic area. 

Erin applied Avaunt (indoxacarb) on May 29, targeting both plum curculio and codling moth. These past two weeks have been quite warm, and Erin reached the recommended management window of 250-300 degree days (base 50℉) post-codling moth biofix. She typically has minimal plum curculio pressure; however, she was finding a few oviposition stings along the edges.

A reminder that plum curculio will continue to lay eggs and move into the orchard until we have reached ~308 degree days (base 50℉) from petal fall. If left uncontrolled, the plum curculio summer generation can cause serious damage to maturing fruit, leaving large feeding holes.

Fire blight has certainly been a concern at Warm Belly, and Erin has put quite a bit of work into pruning out strikes and removing trees where infection has hit the trunk in previous years. She has been keeping an eye on areas with a history of fire blight to catch any potential strikes before they spread. On May 29, Erin used a combination of Captan (captan) and her final application of Apogee (Prohexadione calcium) for the season, as a first cover disease protectant in accordance with the NEWA scab and fire blight model. A reminder that Apogee is a plant growth regulator that helps slow new shoot growth, therefore lowering the risk of disease spread by limiting growth of new shoot material that is highly susceptible to infection.

Shortly after my last visit on May 20th, she applied boron and zinc as a petal fall nutrient application and will be applying calcium to honeycrisp crosses later this week. On May 20, she also applied Roper Rainshield (mancozeb) and Axios (cyprodinil) as disease protectants, and Delegate (spinetoram) to knock down Western flower thrips populations that were above threshold. Erin follows the NEWA Fire Blight Model and NEWA Apple Scab Model to track infection risk, and has a NEWA weatherstation located directly on-site at the Fort Atkinson farm. Thrips feed on flowers and are typically controlled around petal fall to limit damage to fruitlets that resemble scarring or russeting. 

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This article series is NOT intended to be prescriptive for other orchards. It is simply an opportunity for our readership to hear from other growers about their experiences growing fruit crops in Wisconsin. 

Growing the same crop does not always justify the same practices. Management decisions at your farm should be tailored to your operation and consider location, regional climate, disease and pest history of your vineyard, and your varieties. 

The mention of a product is NOT an endorsement. Always follow the instructions on product labels and consult weather stations (ex. NEWA) in your area for current weather forecast and disease and pest prediction models.