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Monique Rivera interviews Liz

Monique Rivera: It is my absolute pleasure today to have Liz Malchoff from Empire Drip on Scaffolds Podcast with us today. Hello Liz.

Liz Malchoff: Hi, thanks for having me.

Monique Rivera: So let’s hop right into it. The first thing I wanted to ask you about is what are the biggest trends that you see in irrigation? What do you think is the future of irrigation based on that?

Liz Malchoff: Right now what I’m seeing a lot of the main trend is automation and chemigation through the irrigation lines. Automation has been really big because labor has been becoming such an issue and so costly finding good help on a small scale we see like simple, more affordable controllers that are going to be controlled either manually or like a bluetooth connection that you have to be within 50ft away. Then we have a large scale options where they’re kind of an internet based system and these systems can be controlled remotely from your computer and monitored remotely from your computer or your tablet. So there’s a lot of different options in terms of price points as well as functions. When it comes to automation, as I’d mentioned, the biggest benefit for automating is the fact that labor is becoming so expensive and hard to find. We have a few growers who have switched to automation and they have claimed that they’ve taken their irrigation person from 30 hours a week doing things, switching valves, switching zones to five to 10 hours a week. Typically this is a manager type position. So this is a higher paid person, a person who could be better used somewhere else anyways. And so bringing this automation into it really kind of frees up that person to be able to do something else and really adds to the efficiencies in your busiest time of the year. The other big benefit for automation is doing sufficient irrigation. A lot of times people are either irrigating too little or too much. They either are forgetting to turn it on at the right time or they’re forgetting to turn it off and now they’ve just totally saturated their soil or paid a lot for the municipal water. So having an automation system can at least just eliminate those issues of having to turn it on or having to turn it off. As more irrigation goes in, chemigation becomes an easier option and gives you the ability to free up another manager or another person who would be either driving a tractor and applying it foliarly or granularly. Just getting it right into the irrigation system gets it right to the root zone where it’s needed and you didn’t have to spend any more time or fuel on that process.

Monique Rivera: I think the main thing that I really wanted to talk to you about today was chemigation. So I’ve been trying to introduce this and kind of push it because companies have been coming to me asking “hey, can you test this product through chemigation?” Is this something that’s appropriate for your region?”, and it’s not very popular here. I think that we could get some good use out of it in IPM program. So for an apple grower, what would you think would be a good way to go about approaching installing chemigation?

Liz Malchoff: Well, what’s nice about the injector systems is that they really can be placed in a position in the system that you can use them for multiple zones. So typically we’re putting them really close to the pumping station, whether that’s an actual physical gas or diesel pump or electric pump, or if that’s like your municipal water connection, your water pit. We’re putting them right at the beginning so that we can utilize them on any of the zones wherever the water can travel. What’s nice about that? We typically recommend that you flush the system anyways after you put anything through the lines. And typically that’s going to be a quick flush between three and a half and 5 minutes just to get it out of the tubing itself. But without putting so much more on that we’re actually diluting it. But if you put it in the system before and then you’re flushing it, that way you can put fertilizer through it, you can put insecticides through it. You can do a lot of different things and not have to worry that you need to have one for each particular chemical application or each particular block or zone. Sometimes the issue that we do come into is that if the injector isn’t sized or it’s sized for a specific flow rate and you have zones that are different sizing, that’s when it can start to get a little tricky. But in those cases, we typically would recommend you going with an injector that’s either a water driven injector or an electrical injector. And I can talk a little bit more on what the differences are with those, but the basic idea is that those will adapt based on the water flowing through them and maintain a specific ratio so you don’t have to be as concerned with the actual parts per million in terms of what you’re putting out.

Monique Rivera: Yeah, definitely. Tell us about the three different options.

Liz Malchoff: So there’s three different styles. The first is what we call a Mazzei injector. Now, that’s a brand name and what it really is is a Venturi style injector. It uses Bernoulli’s principle that as velocity increases, the pressure decreases and it basically has a conical shape that the water goes through, it increases the velocity of the water and then there’s a negative pressure zone. You have a tube that is put into a bucket and that negative pressure zone then creates the suction through the tube and puts it into the system.

Monique Rivera: So the benefits there would be that you don’t need electricity, you can just use the force of the water. Right?

Liz Malchoff: Exactly. And it gives you the ability to operate with really large flows. So there are different sizes based on your flow rate from really small half inch units all the way up to a four inch size unit. And we will use a lot of the bigger ones with remote locations that have no electricity. All of the electric driven injectors need, like a really good AC power source. We have different things that are automated in irrigation that can use batteries like a 24 volt battery, but the electrical injectors, they need a constant power source. So we are basically forced to use the Mazzei unit. The one negative about the Mazzei unit, I would say, is that in the smaller flow rates, there’s smaller windows of operation because there are no moving parts. There’s a certain window that has to be between a minimum and a maximum in terms of flow and the smaller the unit, the smaller that window. And so they’re more tricky to size and they’re unforgiving if you’re changing your block size or your zones are a little bit different. When you get into the larger sizes, like the inch and a half and up, there are larger windows of operation. I’m talking like between 30 and 40 gallons of difference between the minimum and maximum. And so they’re a little more forgiving when it comes to having a little bit different zone sizes, but they also take a little bit more tweaking. You use some valves to kind of create some hydraulics. It’s a little bit more complicated than I want to get into, but basically you can tweak the valves to increase that suction. You’re kind of messing with the water that’s going through the unit itself and the water that’s still passing through in your main line. So they would require a little bit more manual adjustment if you were going to be changing zone sizes. The good thing about the Mazzei unit, though, is the most you can get it to suck is about up to 3%. So you’re still always going to maintain a safe amount of application that it’s going to be distributing throughout the drip system and not going on your plants into too high of a concentration.

Monique Rivera: Wow, that is crazy. I didn’t even realize that you would be able to do this without electricity. I just always assumed there would be some sort of pump function. So given those differences, what do you think is about the average cost per acre for each of the systems?

Liz Malchoff: So the other two I didn’t touch upon yet was the water driven injector. That is a unit that basically is using the water that’s passing through the unit to maintain a set ratio. One of the units is a 1% ratio. We have another series of injectors that is an adjustable ratio series. So that will be adjusted between 0.2 and 2.5 percent. A lot of times these are being utilized the most in like a greenhouse application where people are putting on hanging baskets or other things, smaller pots of things that need a little bit more precise, especially when the fertilizer is saying ounces per plant or something like that. The water driven injector the 1% ratio one is only good up to 15 gallons a minute. So we do have some limitations in terms of flow rate for that one. And with the adjustable ratio one it’s good up to 45 gallons a minute. So again we still have some kind of limitations with that. 45 gallons a minute in an orchard application is probably only going to be three or four acres and the cost on those is quite a bit as well. So that’s when we’ll either go to the electric injector or to like a bigger of the Mazzie. Now an electric injector is basically just that, it uses a high pressure, low volume pump that you basically will tee right into your system. There is a piece that actually goes into your line. It’s kind of like a water meter and it’s actually measuring the flow and that’s then talking to the computer that’s determining the actual injection rate. And that also is something that you can set between I think up to 5% on the electrical injectors. Again, they obviously need electric to work but they can run for a really long time. And so if you’ve got a system where you’ve already got an electric pump the electric injector kind of makes sense to combine with that because then you won’t be limited by the injector. Price point on that is going to be between $2500-$3,000 and some of the bigger Mazzei units are about that same price point. So it really isn’t necessarily a cost thing when we start getting to that flow size. It really is more of if you have power or not.

Monique Rivera: Wow, okay, so basically if they already have irrigation installed then was there any way to prioritize or pick which unit? Is there a best one for large acreage and maybe one that’s not as good or would be better for smaller blocks?

Liz Malchoff: Yeah. The two components I will typically discuss with the grower when trying to decide which one works best for them is their management and labor. If they have a person that is capable of kind of handling these things and their electricity, or not electricity. That I would probably say is more so the determining factor, because if we have electricity, the electrical one works a lot easier in terms of just getting it set up and then continued use throughout the season. So when in doubt, go with the easier to use one.

Monique Rivera: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that’s all the questions that I have for today. So that was delightful going through different types and obviously if you do shop with Empire Drip, you will be able to consult with Liz or someone else on the team to figure out what best meets your needs. But thanks so much for being on the podcast today, Liz.

Liz Malchoff: Yeah. And I think that’s the ultimate takeaway is I know it’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of things out there, but relying on someone else to kind of give you some advice and talk through your specific scenario, that’s the thing about farming, is everyone has different on-farm logistics. And it’s really important to communicate that with your irrigation designers so that we can come up with something that works best not only for doing what you want to do, but also to be compatible with how you run your farm and the people that you have available to do so. That’s always my thing is don’t feel overwhelmed with all the information out there. Lean on these people because we can definitely provide you with some guidance on which system is going to work best for you.

Monique Rivera: Well, Liz, most people in the state of New York already know you by name, Liz from Empire Drip. So if you all need assistance, contacting her, I will include her contact information, the contact information for Empire Drip in the show notes. So thanks so much, Liz.

Liz Malchoff: Thank you very much.

Pathology Update with Kerik Cox

 I think last week we talked a little bit more about distinguishing apple blotch, formerly known as Marssonina leaf blight, from some other diseases, including glomerella and some other things. And since that point in time, I’ve even seen a third symptom type. It looks a lot like Marssonina or the apple blotch, except that within these sort of islands of green, there’s a more pale dead zone area. It looks a lot like necrotic leaf blotch, which is sort of a different problem entirely, but usually only restricted to Golden Delicious apples. Now, I don’t know if the cultivar samples I received were Golden Delicious or not, but it looked a little bit more like that or it looked a little bit more like the large areas of yellow mixed in with a little maybe frogeye leaf spot. Now, that one was a little bit perplexing, but you could definitely tell it’s different from our Marssonina apple blotch type symptom, where it is large areas of yellow followed by sort of haloed lesions with an island of green around them. Within those lesions it’s sort of very dark and almost olive to gray colored like a very weirdly diffuse apple scab lesion.

So with that in mind, there are other things out there as well other than the three. How do we beat these types of diseases? Well, the best ways to do it is you’re going to get a lot of control out of your apple scab program, but these things are going to come on a little bit later in the summer. But there is going to be some overlap. Typically you’re going to see the problems where you have to rely heavily, in like an organic operation, where you can’t have the synthetic fungicides or you’re just relying entirely on protectant fungicides. These single site synthetic fungicides that have post infection activity and highly specific modes of action seem to be the best. And these would include your QoIs, things like Flint, and SDHIs like your Fontellis, your Miravis, your Aprovia, including things like your Merivon which also has a QoI in it, and the DMIs which includes like Cevya, Inspire Super, and Indar to be some of the best. These seem to provide the best levels of control in these patho systems according to a lot of trials I’ve looked at throughout the eastern United States.

Some of the other things that are going to be important, later we’re going to talk about, is sanitation and really going to be tightening down your summer cover applications if you’re struggling with these diseases. It may be that in the future with these erratic weather and warmer climate conditions, we may have to tighten our summer cover intervals.

So one of the things that we learned last year, we had a nasty Marssonina or diplocaropn apple blotch outbreak and it was really defoliating trees. The defoliation was most apparent in September. One of the things that we did notice was that it was really strong in the treatments that only had captan or Captan and prophyte for the summer. Now treatments that were receiving the synthetic single site fungicides were doing a lot better and these had all of their leaves on them. Also we noticed differences between the different cultivars. We also noticed that cultivars such as Empire was fine, but the Goldens and the Jonagold was nearly completely defoliated. However, it didn’t matter that much if we had ended our apple scab program with synthetic single site fungicides such as Tesaris, which is a group seven SDHI or Excalia, or some of these others, or even things like Merivon.

I asked my friend and colleague Sarah Villani out of North Carolina State, and she has done a bunch of trials on apple blotch or Marssonina leaf blight. Here are some of the things that she found over the time. It looks like you can get a lot of mileage from these diseases by using those synthetic single site fungicides from pink to second cover. And she did a trial in 2019 looking early fungicide applications timed at this time and fungicides such as Inspire, one of the components of Inspire Super, Cadis now known as Tesaris, another group seven, and materials like Merivon, another DMI fungicide also very effective. So the DMI seemed to be good, some of the group 7’s seemed to be good, Merivon seemed to be fantastic but it really varied depending on the materials.

Overall, it did not look like the QoI components are as strong in her trials against this. They had greater variability and some of the incidences could approach as high as 60%. But this is with only going fungicides from pink to second cover, really timing those type of situations. In many instances, QoIs weren’t as strong, and based on some of her programs in 2022 she did some full season-long programs as well as others that focused on Pink to 9th cover over the summer programs. Some of the really stronger performers in this again seem to be the DMI fungicides. We’ve sort of left and gotten away from them, from our apple scab populations because we had concerns of resistance. But some of these new ones like Cevya and Inspire Super, and in particular her Cevya program starting at third cover, which is pretty deep into the season, and moving in through 9th cover was one of the strongest performing materials, reducing Marssonina leaf blight or apple blotch on leaves from about 75% to about 5% with that program.

However, that uses up your entire DMI application for the entire summer. But if it turns out this starts becoming a major disease problem, we might start to think about managing our fungal diseases in a different way by shifting, focusing on protectants early in the season, and then really moving to those single sites. In many of my own trials, I don’t even like to start them until I almost get to like, late Pink or Petal Fall for the sheer bonus of being able to pick up everything else as well. It even looks like doing a full season long program of captan and Manzate Max is quite effective, but still had a lot of variability. I just think that maybe the captan may not be as strong against this particular patho system.

And so one of the things to sort of really round up is that you shouldn’t only go after these diseases in the summer, but you might have to start making applications for them. Particularly if you start getting four inches of rain in the middle of July, when we normally have a drought. Focus time should be pink to second cover and then moving on into the summer with third cover to 9th. It seems that the late season is good, but also targeting some of those early infections and picking up some of your scab pressure probably also helping out with a little bit of bitter rot, because that’ll also be a very important component at that pink to second cover window as well as fly speck/sooty blotch, which comes in at petal fall.

And finally, I want to say it may be important if we have a lot of trash and we have a lot of Marssonina, it may be better to do urea post leaf drop this year which can do a lot for eliminating Scab inoculum. And you know what? If your leaf inoculum has Marssonina or Diplocarpon from the apple blotch on it, it will also degrade it as well. It may be important to shoot for the fall. It looks like, according to a study by Dr. Turner Sutton in 2000, it looks like that really good post leaf fall was a really good time to get the maximum benefit. Now, depending on how your operation is, if it starts to get too wet and too rainy, it might not be easy to get your tractor in there and you might be forced to go back to the spring. You’re still going to get excellent control whether or not you do a fall or a spring. It doesn’t look like you get a bonus from doing both, but if things are really dirty make sure you might even want to start in the fall just to give yourself a little bit of a heads up as you go into the next year. And that’s all I’ve got for Scaffolds this week. Good luck and hopefully we’ll talk about something new next week.

 State of the State with Anna Wallis

 And now for the State of the State, your weekly roundup of degree day accumulations and phenology from the major fruit production regions of the state. As always, this information has been aggregated from the regional specialists, my own observations and from the NEWA website.

Fruit across the region is continuing to size and color. Fruitlets are about in the neighborhood of 50 grams or so, about golf ball size. So for Honeycrisp, this is the appropriate time for peel sap analysis to predict bitter pit. I know a lot of you are participating in this program. If you’re interested, you can reach out to the regional teams to see if they’re still able to help you.

Unfortunately, this season we have continued to see severe weather events. There’s a great crop in a lot of places, but places that were affected by the March freeze event and the isolated hail events are really evident at this point. This week, we continue to see a heat wave across a large portion of the country. We’ve also experienced torrential rain, including power outages, flash flooding, and standing water in a lot of the state. Primarily, this has been in the Hudson Valley with excessive rainfall, precipitation reported of up to six inches in some locations, and also in isolated locations in northeastern New York and western New York. Other places are experiencing a drought, notably the western part of the state in the Buffalo region, which has had less than a quarter of an inch of rain this month. It’s classified as a D1 or moderate drought according to the US. Drought Monitor, which is a partnership between the USDA, the University of Nebraska, and the NOAA. We’ll link the website for that Drought Monitor in the show notes.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?Northeast

We’re continuing to track degree days Base 43 is an indicator of insect activity. Both 43 and 50 base temperatures are summarized in the show notes and have been used historically. And you can find an average range of degree day accumulations for phenology and arthropod pest activity in the Cornell Tree Fruit Guidelines. That’s table 7.1.4.

A few things that are happening now include:

Apple maggot begins to be active typically at the beginning of July. So if you haven’t already, now is the appropriate time to be hanging red sticky sphere traps. The overwintering pupa are beginning to emerge, typically from wetter areas and dense hedgerows. You can place the traps near these locations or where you’ve seen damage in the past. We recommend you do three per site, and then if you’re using baited traps, an average of five flies captured per trap is the threshold.

Codling, moth, obliquebanded leafroller, and OFM are all tapering off in most of the state.

Mites are present in orchards. Now we’re starting to get reports from commercial orchards of a few mites. The sampling procedure in the Cornell guidelines begins with sampling 20 leaves, four from each of five trees. Inspect the top and the bottom of each leaf and determine the presence or absence for each leaf, and then use the schematic to determine if a treatment is needed.

San Jose scale is active now in most of the state, has been for the past few weeks in the Hudson Valley and now in western New York. As I’ve told you in the past, you can be monitoring for these insects by placing black electrical tape or double sided tape around branches just above active infestation.

Apple leaf curling midge continues to be active in some locations. It’s an emerging problem in some regions of the state, notably the Champlain Valley and isolated places in western New York.

In terms of diseases, fire blight continues to rear its ugly head in places that had infections last year, so keep an eye out. We also encourage you to review webinars on fire blight research that are being produced from ongoing collaborations from researchers across the country. Most recently, there was a webinar that was hosted by Michigan State University about pruning out strikes and the most effective way to do that. We’ll link that in the show notes.

Secondary scab infections are starting to show up where it slipped through or where blocks were unmanaged.

We’re seeing less mildew this week.

Also, summer rots are in full swing, and so hopefully you’ve got covers on to be managing those.

We’ve also been getting more reports of declining trees from various places across the state. There are many possible contributing factors to tree decline, so it’s important that you’re getting a good ID with all the standing rainfall and wet feet. Phytopthora is one possible organism that comes to mind. Also, drought can cause tree decline if trees are under enough stress. Cold damage is one that we’ve seen frequently throughout the state that can cause damage to the cambium and then tree collapse. Fire blight, if it makes it to the rootstock, can also cause constriction of that vascular system and then tree collapse. Herbicides are another one that are implicated in trunk damage, and tree collapse and trunk borers are something else that we’re seeing more and more causing damage, especially to young, high density trees. So it could be any of these individual factors or a combination. It’s really important to get a good ID for a good IPM program and successful management. So make sure you’re taking a really close look and calling in help if you need a second opinion.

And finally, here is the rundown of Degree Day base 43 accumulations at NEWA weather stations throughout the state. As usual, they’re in the show notes for you to reference later as well. As of the end of the day, Tuesday, July 11, Degree Day accumulations were: