How We Grow Healthy Apples

How We Grow Healthy Apples

Many have asked – How Do We Grow Healthy Apples?

So, how do we make sure we grow the healthiest apples possible? We grow our apples with an earth-friendly method called IPM (Integrated Pest Management).

IPM is a method of pest management used to help farmers anticipate and prevent pest outbreaks so that crops can be grown more environmentally safe and economically sound. It is based on using a wide variety of pest management tactics to produce wholesome apples.

What pest is usually responsible for being that proverbial worm in the apple? That would be the codling moth. The codling moth is one of the most serious pests of apple and pear fruits. The moth lays its eggs under the skin of the apple and then the larvae of the moth tunnel in and destroy the fruit.

Dave Flannery, the owner of Apple Holler, explains how we use insect traps and IPM to grow healthy apples in the following video.

Red apples in a wooden basket sitting on green grass
Speaker 1 (00:01):

Well, this is a trap and it’s part of our pest management, integrated pest management program. And in this particular trap, we’re trapping for coddling moss, which are one of the very harmful insects in the state of Wisconsin, two apples. And what they’ll do, what the coddling moth will do, is to actually lay their eggs in the skin of the apple right underneath the surface of this apple skin. And then eventually that egg will hatch and become the proverbial worm in the apple and will burrow its way into the center of the apple. So what we are doing here is we’ve placed a scent on this little pheromone, on this lore that is the scent of the coddling moth, to lure other cladding moths to this very sticky trap. And what we’re seeing here is there are no coddling moss on it. There’s a lot of flies, but no coddling moss, which indicates that we don’t have a coddling moss problem at this point in time, and therefore we don’t have to spray any kind of pesticide to control these harmful coddling moss, which eventually would lay eggs and create little worms in the apples. So again, it’s part of our Integrated pest management program, and for that reason, we are using a very healthy, earth-friendly way of controlling these coddling loss rather than spraying. And that’s about it.