Cherry rootstocks, a detailed guide
Vigour, precocity, yield efficiency, soil adaptation and disease tolerance of the cherry rootstocks, from fourteen sources — and why the same rootstock is a different tree in another field.
Technical articles
Articles — page 3
Hydrological assessment before planting kiwifruit: four measurements anyone can make
Infiltration, drainage, the profile and the water table are four different questions with four different answers. The FAO ring test, the pit test, the observation pipe and how to read the colours of a soil pit - plus why an 8 L/h dripper ponds on clay.
Peach fruit deformation disease: the Greek chronicle and the Chinese evidence
Five years of deformed peach fruit in Pella, the official analyses that ruled out a virus, and fifty years of Chinese research on the same phenomenon — published only in Chinese until now.
The right soil for growing kiwifruit
pH below 7.3, two metres free of an impermeable layer, five hours before the root runs out of oxygen in saturated soil. Why kiwifruit does better on loam than on sandy loam, what water quality rules out a block outright, and what it really costs to make a marginal block work.
Postharvest nutrition in stone fruit: the next crop is made in July
90% of the nitrogen in next spring’s spur leaves comes from reserves stored this autumn, and the pistil forms 7 to 9 weeks after harvest. Autumn urea, boron and zinc - what the trials show, when they work, and the Polish study where only boron did anything at all.
VPD: vapour pressure deficit — calculation, measurement, limits
VPD is the force with which the air pulls water out of the leaf. Not humidity, not temperature, but their combination — and it explains why a well-watered tree closes its stomata and stops growing its fruit within two hours. With a calculator, the acceptable ranges, and what to do when they are exceeded.
Kiwifruit decline syndrome (KVDS): hydraulic failure, not a pathogen
The vine stops lifting water while the soil is wet. Root density, a 2% intercellular space and the five-hour oxygen rule explain why kiwifruit is the extreme case.
Iron in the fertigation of fruit trees
Which chelate holds up at which pH, why only Fe-EDDHA works on calcareous soils, how it is injected into the drip line, and the rates per tree and per hectare.
Regulated deficit irrigation in peach and nectarine
Water is withheld only while the pit hardens and the fruit is not growing. Why it works on late cultivars, why it costs size on early ones, and how the stress is actually measured.
Wood-decay fungi on peach: Phellinus is an indicator, not a killer
On stone fruit the species is Phellinus tuberculosus, not P. igniarius. It lives inside your own orchard, enters through pruning wounds and works for years before the bracket appears.
Persimmon: growing the crop from the soil to the cold store
Salinity, nitrogen and soil calcium — the three points where persimmon growing does not forgive. With documented limits, planting distances, nutrition, diseases and postharvest. Doses in kg/ha.
The right time to feed bearing trees
Why December and January dressings are money thrown away, when nitrogen uptake actually starts, and how to split nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium through the season.