Sustainable fruit system SFS

in a Sustainable fruit system, pest and diseases are under indirect control, that is to use disease tolerant and resistant varieties, plant flower plants in tree rows, or selected plants for hedges and use less plant protection products like sprays. Obviously, it needs more intensive management and labor work to check on the trees and for physical control, especially after the new growing season starts, good protection of young plant organs like buds, leaves, shoots and young fruits is important if you want some good looking and tasty apples this year!

Preventive works like clearing out fallen leaves sounds like a tedious job, but last year there was an outbreak of apple scab (a fungus infection) in the apple orchard and we lost some good yields. This scab spreads by wet leaves and warmer temperature, they stay and infect the fallen leaves and overwinter, wait till spring and summer they inject pathogen to the air...sounds scary right? So, we spent a day just to clearing out the dead fallen leaves, this should have been done earlier in Autumn. Probably they had too much work and were busy with controlling the scab.

simple works with good reasons

We also killed off the water shoots that had grown from the bottom part of stems or surface roots, they are enemies of trees cos they uptake nutrients and compete water with the trees. Last season, they also put white paint on the lower part of tree stem to balance sun energy reflection or insulation of the upper and lower part of the stem.

There are many manual works in the orchards, if you can afford to grow it organically and extensively. Like putting weights or bending rubber strips to fix the growing angle of tree branches. For the whole afternoon, we checked tree by tree to see which branches have grown with too narrow angle. No wonder organic fruits price much higher with such huge maintenance costs.

little weights we put on trees

water shoots -- shot you off!

Home. Swiss home
I have some very nice flatmates here, Simona from Bavaria and Elke from Stuttgart  previously there were Frauke but she moved out last week...I really like the simple life and time we have in this little guesthouse. Making pizzas, long night chats and the feeling of being part of a family.
The idea of WG sounds great, you have your private time and space, but when you want some fun and someones to talk to, go to the kitchen and common room! Sadly I only stay here for 2 more months, wish I could find a similar place in Freising or Munich.