This year’s Notes from the Field follows Erin Warner with Warm Belly Farm (Cottage Grove, Fort Atkinson). The goal of this newsletter is to hear from the grower’s perspective and foster connection and knowledge sharing between fruit growers. I’ll be focusing our discussions around farm history, phenology/fruit development and integrated pest management. As we move through fruit set, hear how Erin is tackling early summer management challenges.

Apple orchard at Warm Belly Farm’s Fort Atkinson location

I chatted with Erin on Tuesday, June 17. Due to weather, we were not able to do a farm visit this week. A reminder the Fort Atkinson location has about 24 different apple varieties, all planted in a dwarfing, high-density trellised system, mostly on G.11 and some B.9 rootstock.

Codling moth pheromone traps were hung on May 4th, and reached biofix on May 21st. Erin’s last trap check on June 11 had a total of four codling moth captures across five traps.

Fire blight continues to be 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. In the past week, she has pruned out a few suckers with fire blight symptoms, and has not observed spread into the canopy.

Along with the insecticide application on June 12, Erin used a combination of Captan (captan) and Topsin (thiophanate-methyl) as a second cover disease protectant for summer fruit rots. Erin has had good results with Apogee applications and believes that has played a large role in limiting fire blight strikes.  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.

Fruit set is becoming more clear after a handful of hard freezes that occurred between April 20 and May 20. Erin is estimating the orchard has about 20-25% cropload compared to the last several seasons. Many fruitlets that are hanging on have frost rings (see photo below), that make the fruit less marketable. The majority of remaining fruit is located in the upper canopy where temperatures may have been a degree or two warmer during the freeze events. Check out Dr. Amaya Atucha’s most recent article on Predicting Apple Fruit Set After Thinning Sprays.

With such a loss, orchard management will need to be adjusted, especially since Warm Belly is primarily pick your own. Erin and her team are working through shifts in business planning and will be determining a course of action in the coming weeks when fruit are fully set and cropload estimates are more accurate.

Honeyberries were harvested in the last week and are available for purchase at the Cottage Grove location. Erin has 600 honeyberry bushes with a total yield 350lbs for the 2026 season. She has three honeyberry varieties: Aurora, Indigo Gem and Indigo Treat. Erin has determined that Aurora was much easier to harvest as the shrubs were less dense and allowed for berries to fall through the canopy into the harvest pools.

To harvest the honeyberries, Erin used kiddie swimming pools cut in half that were placed underneath the bushes. Bushes were hand shaken to dislodge the berries, which drop conveniently into the kiddie pools below. From there, berries were placed into bins to dry, then were taken back to be shaken over a “debris slide” (see photo below). Berries were slowly rolled down the slide while simultaneously being blown with a leaf blower to remove any remaining leaf litter and stems.

That’s all for now – I’ll check back in with Erin in our next Wisconsin Fruit Newsletter on July 3!