Post harvest clean-up 2016

All of our harvest teams had a strong finish, and now we’re on to cleaning!

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“Cleaning ditches, cleaning excess leaves from bogs, cleaning up everything from harvest. Grass, weeds, debris: all of it,” says COO Byran vonHahmann. “Then once that’s done, we’ll have a crew installing swan string.” Under the direction of Matt Giberson, our foremen are trying out some new equipment to help with some of debris cleanup.

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“We’re trying out some new-to-us equipment that municipalities use for leaf and brush pick-up,” Bryan says. “When we harvest and gather off the same corner of the bog every year, all the leaves come to that corner and settle there. Those are hard to rake out of the vines, and then year after year they settle to the ground. Which means that eventually they’ll choke the vines out and kill them. With some bogs, especially the bigger ones, you end up with a lot and that space becomes significant. So the plan is to vacuum those areas right out. We tested it a couple of weeks ago and it worked really, really well to help us reclaim those corners and keep them healthy.”

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At the same time, the crew is cleaning out the ditches inside the older bogs.

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As far as our other post-harvest project, however: “There’s nothing new with swan string,” Bryan says. “We just have to get it done.”

Tundra swans are a tremendous annoyance to local growers due to their feeding habits. They are particularly fond of red root, a weed that competes with cranberry vines for nutrients. You might think that swans are a natural solution to the problem; unfortunately, when the swans fly in to feed, they not only tear out the red root, they also tear out vines and leave enormous holes that damage the beds themselves.

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Since the swans are a protected species, growers have had to come up with a solution to keep them away from the crop. At Pine Island our team installs swan string. To start, the team places rebar in the ground along the longer sides of a bog, about every 75 feet. On the ends of the bog, the team walks it out and determines how many lines they’ll need to run lengthwise though the center.

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Once the rods are laid out on the dam, a team of three to five people gets into the bog and walks the string across. Once the entire bog is strung, the team goes back in and puts up poles, which are used to keep the strings out of the water so that they don’t freeze. They’re placed in a checkered pattern, not necessarily on every line. The poles can either be cedar posts or recycled irrigation pipe. In addition to the recycling/environmental aspect, reusing the irrigation line is lighter and easier to handle.

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The strings help keep the swans out of the bog by limiting the space available. “Swans are like a commercial airliner,” CEO Bill Haines says. “Having the strings up disrupts their attempt to both land and take off again.” Not all of the bogs are strung; our team maps them out where we have found red root and where the swans have been spotted.

Once all of this is done, our team will be ready for our next targets: sanding and the winter flood!

Improvements in nutrition application

While the busiest part of the growing season is behind us, our Integrated Crop Management program is still working on our last fertilizer applications before harvest begins next month. The amount of fertilizer to be applied is determined by variety, soil conditions, and past practices, requiring constant evaluation of current conditions, history, and trends. Nutritional needs are also different for young vines as opposed to established plantings.

Additional nutrition is necessary because while cranberries have adapted (and thrive) in their native sandy soil, nutrients are taken from the bog through the harvest of fruit. The three main elements usually added for nutrition are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. According to cranberries.org: “Cranberry plant demand for nitrogen is highest during three stages of the lifecycle critical to cranberry development–early growth, fruit set and bud set. Early growth is when the plant grows vegetatively through vining and root growth and produces a flush of new leaves. Fruit set is when the flower becomes pollinated and fruit begin to form. Soon after fruit set comes bud set when nitrogen is needed for both fruit development and production of the next year’s flower bud.”

“For the established beds, we’re doing a final application to make sure the plants have enough nutrition to stay healthy and set buds for next year’s crop,” says manager Mike Haines. “For the Early Blacks, we’re doing one more application, but the Stevens are getting at least two more. And the young beds will be treated for a little longer than that.” We rely on on stalwart vendors such as Downstown Aero for broad application, but for precision application our team is working with some new equipment!

COO Bryan vonHahmann refers to this machine as the “fertilizer buggy”, and it’s not hard to see why. As so many things in the cranberry industry do, the initial idea came from a chat with a neighboring grower. “It all started from wanting to get more accurate applications,” he says. “Bill Cutts brought his over for us to look at. Kevin Sooy [another neighbor] built the frame for us. His family has one, the Lees have one; all of them have hopper spreaders, and we decided we wanted something even more precise. So we added an air system with individual nozzles. It’s going well! We bought a computer to calibrate different products: liquid, dry, different fertilizers. We have a few tweaks to make yet but over time we’ll probably end up with another one here and one in Chile.”

Team members have been pleased with the results. “I like the area you can cover with it,” says Jeremy Fenstermaker. “Once you get it calibrated you don’t have to mess with it; it’s all computerized. We go by by weight; just enter the numbers for each different product and it’s dispensed at the correct rate. It’s always good to have another option. At first I didn’t think we needed it, but it’s been very useful. Much better than out there with a bucket! That 40 foot boom makes a huge difference. And it shouldn’t be too hard on the plants; you can barely see where it drove through the bog, with those tires.”

And, of course, we’re always looking ahead. “This is going to improve our overall efficiency,” Mike says. “We’ll be able to free up a couple of people to fill in elsewhere but still get a lot of ground covered.”

IPM – Drones

Last month we spoke with Dr. Peter Oudemans of Rutgers University about how our fairy ring treatment is progressing. This week, he had a team out mapping the selected treatment site with drones.

Using aerial technology to pinpoint treatment is a crucial component in integrated pest management, or IPM. What is IPM? The UC Cooperative Extension says:

“IPM is an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties. . . . [T]reatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organism.”

Drones can be a tremendous help with this. Per an earlier article from Robohub, “agriculture is a big data problem without the big data.” The article goes on to explain:

“Rather than taking pictures and videos of people, [drones will] be surveying fields, using their high-resolution sensors to improve crop yield and decrease agricultural water and [treatment] use. . . About half of the “inputs” in farming. . . are typically wasted because they’re applied in greater amount than needed or in the wrong place, such as the ground between plants rather than the plants themselves.”

At the Pine Island experimental site “we use two different types, a fixed-wing and a quad copter,” Peter says. “The fixed-wing is good for surveying because it can cover a large area in a short amount of time, while the quad is for more precise work.” The quad is also easier to fly. This week, however, they only flew the fixed-wing. “It took three sets of images, which will hopefully tell us more about how the fairy ring treatments are progressing.”

“They’re going to change the whole way we do things,” says CEO Bill Haines. “It’s moving us toward site specific agriculture, not just treating the whole bog.”

Bees and pollination – Spring 2016

A good fall harvest depends on a successful growing and pollination season, and cranberry growers, like many fruit growers, rely on honeybees and bumble bees to cross pollinate blossoms. Production and yield is directly tied to good pollination and subsequent fruit set. In addition, pollinators are important to native plants, which provide food and cover for numerous wildlife species, as well as helping stabilize the soil and improve water quality. One of the more important elements in the Pine Island Integrated Crop Management (PIICM) program is ensuring adequate pollination; flowers that are not visited by bees rarely produce fruit. To this end, we work with several New Jersey beekeepers to temporarily install hives during the bloom period, usually at the end of May/beginning of June depending on the weather.

“We start planning for this in the winter,” says manager Mike Haines. “I started calling beekeepers in February and March and telling them we’ll need X number of hives. We usually place two per acre. Some experts think we could get away with one per acre, Dad knows a Wisconsin grower who will do six or seven . . . but we’re sticking with two. We calculated that meant about 2500 colonies, give or take, which is a lot of bees! So we have to ask a few beekeepers; some are comfortable bringing as many as they can, others are more comfortable with a lower number. This way, everyone’s happy.” He also thinks the cooler spring has had some effects. “This is my first year working with this, but it feels a bit later,” he says. “We tend to start right after fairy ring applications are done while the plants are still in the hook stage switching over to bloom.” He tries to give the beekeepers as much lead time as he can, and calls about once or twice a week to let them know when the next hives need to be placed. “They have a lot to coordinate on their end, so I try to make it easier. On our end, we make a map with places to drop hives; we need places to put them that are out of the way of people and trucks. People get annoyed at me when they have to walk down a ramp directly next to a lot of bees!” Placement order is also based on factors such as variety, when the water came off, and location. “Crimson Queen is our earliest variety and we had bees two weeks ago in there. Early Blacks and Stevens are farthest behind, but most of those will begin by the end of next week. Jeremy [Fenstermaker] and I are combing through the whole farm to make sure we know; we’re a week from needing them here, three days from there . . that helps with the planning.”

The work isn’t done after the bees are in place, either. Team member Tim Bourgeois took a beginner beekeeping class in order to learn more about this fascinating aspect of cranberry production. “It was a really interesting class,” Tim says. “I’d been hearing a lot about the colony collapse disorder, and I really wanted to know more. And since I’m the person who works on treatments and applications, I thought it’d be good to have at least one person on the farm familiar with bees in general; bee care, health, maintenance, things like that. The class focused on beginning beekeeper information: anatomy, food source requirements, hive care and maintenance, bee colony care and maintenance, how to establish a colony, and items related to that. It didn’t cover renting hives, since it’s a beginning course, but it was a lot of really good information.” The plan is for Tim to accompany the state apiary inspector the next time he comes by to check the hives: “I’ll ride along with him and he’ll give me some pointers of thing to look for, make sure hives are healthy and the bees are doing what they’re supposed to.”

Fairy ring treatments – 2016

This week, our team finished our yearly treatment for fairy ring. Fairy ring is a persistent issue for growers, and we work very closely with researchers to find solutions.

“We start treatment at the roughneck stage,” says Matt Giberson, “and stop once we start seeing a lot of flower out there. It can be a little tricky; we don’t put on an application after a long frost night, or heavy rain, because too much water can stress the soil.” Treatments are planned very carefully. “Mike [Haines] and I go over the top producing bogs that aren’t marked for renovation, and set priorities. We start with Ben Lears first, because they bloom the fastest, and then go into the Stevens bogs. Once we’ve made the plan, we give Blondie, Alejandro, Tito, and Albert the maps and send them out. It takes two crews to get everything done, but they’re really hustling.”

A great deal of our knowledge comes from research being conducted by the Rutgers Marucci Center. Dr. Peter Oudemans has ongoing fairy ring experiments on some of Pine Island’s established beds. “What we’re doing with the experiment is looking at different treatments, especially different rates, to see which ones will control the disease best,” Peter says. “So on the one bog, we’re looking at one specific treatment, and we’re looking at different rates for the treatment and different rates of water. Because the fungus is in the organic layers beneath the sand, we need to figure out how much it takes to move the applications to the right position. We did some studies to look at how much water will it take to get to the correct depth, and what we found out is that .2 gallons per square foot is probably the minimum that we can use. Which is kind of what we found from our soil moisture probes as well. We’re starting to see some control at those levels.” The other bog, he says, is being used to test other treatments. However, he says, “we’re looking at two problems. First: how do you measure success? Because those plots are big and hard to evaluate. So we’re using drones to evaluate the progress. We measure once a month, to see if there’s any change in amount. It’s been pretty useful to measure it that way; we can capture data in fifteen minutes, evaluate progress over time, and capture it through the summer.”

“The other problem is, what can we expect from fairy ring control?” he says. “Fairy ring already messes up the canopy. It kills the edge, but then it leaves the center as a scar on the bed and also reduces yield. But talking with Dan [Schiffhauer ]and Joan [Davenport], we came up with some possible treatments for the centers of those rings to help them recover and help with the scarring, such as slow release fertilizers.”

Fairy ring has been a persistent problem in the local cranberry industry for a long time, and it’s been tricky to address, even with all the hard work from researchers. Manager Mike Haines remembers tracking in in 2008 during his summers home from college. “The best thing is not having to deal with it in the first place,” he says. “That’s a huge focus when we assign a bog for renovation. A lot of the time, the beds you’re renovating are the old ones being torn up by fairy ring, so you don’t want that problem to recur. You want to do it all right from the beginning. Attention to detail in renovation and thinking about it thoroughly and critically are important so you can avoid having to do all this stuff later.”

Joan Davenport – May 2016 visit

This week, it was once again time to hear from one of our favorite visiting scientists, Dr. Joan Davenport! Joan, a former researcher for Ocean Spray, works with Pine Island Cranberry to provide guidance on fertilizer, water, and nutrients, as well as general PIICM management.

“This was an especially good visit, because there was a lot of education involved,” says manager Mike Haines. “We had a big group going out, with a mix of new and more experienced people, but everyone who was there really wanted to learn.” The team spent a day and a half with Joan walking through a variety of bogs on the property. “We looked at different varieties in different locations and looked at several factors,” Mike says. “One Stevens bed might need ten pounds of nitrogen, but we can’t assume the next bed needs the same. It depends on location, when the water comes off, is it an established bed or a young bed…all kinds of things.”

Tim Bourgeois and Matt Stiles both met Joan for the first time this year and say they really learned a lot. “Fertilizer applications and the specific requirements for cranberries are interesting to learn about,” Tim says. “The how, the what, the why. Cranberries are very different from other crops; they need less fertilizer than other crops do, and the water requirement is different, so you need a good, solid, accurate baseline for what stage they should be at by this point in the growing season. But Joan anticipated a lot of the questions I had in my head and answered as we went through everything, bog by bog.” He says it’s a work in progress: “I’m still trying to get a mental picture of what color plants should be during their normal growth stages so I can also know what problematic coloring looks like.” Matt agrees: “We seem to be on the right track with everything, and it was really informative; she showed us exactly what to look for.”

Things are a little different this year, as well. “We had to make some changes due to the cold wet spring,” says Jeremy Fenstermaker. “We also decided against doing a roughneck fertilizer application this year, so the nitrogen levels are going to be different; typically we’d start with ten pounds on the Stevens and Ben Lear beds but this year we’re going with five.” He attributes some of this to our sanding results. “You can see the difference in plant growth and vigor this year already; we’ll see how it affects insect pressure later on.”

“At this point in the growing season, we are evaluating the plants for fruit potential and trying to develop recommendations for applications between bloom and fruit set. To do this, I look at hook, the length and color of the new upright growth, and the amount and color of old leaves, including looking for leaves from two growing seasons ago,” Joan says.

Weather effects – update

We talked a couple of weeks ago about the weather this spring and the issues that could come up as a result, and this week we spoke with other growers as well as researchers to learn what kind of effects they’ve been seeing.

On our own place, things are starting to catch up. “Stuff is really starting to grow,” says manager Mike Haines. “We’re starting to see hook stage out in the bogs, which is the growth stage right before bloom. So we’ve been getting busy already.” The drawback to plant growth, he says, is that the pests grow right along with it, and some of them can be very dangerous to a crop. “The blackheaded fireworm is particularly dangerous, because they reproduce so quickly,” he says. “So even if you only see a couple, it means you have to move fast.” To that end, his team has been working diligently to scout the entire farm for various pests as well as creating a plan for handling possible infestation.

The weather’s also been an issue for the operation next door. Steve Lee III, of Lee Brothers in Speedwell, is seeing the same effect. “We were running a good week, ten days behind,” he says. “Growth kind of exploded after it cleared up; I suspect the warm weather and warm nights are helping that now.” While he’s observed another 3/4 inches of growth once things warmed up, “I don’t think you ever catch entirely back up; once you’re behind stay a little behind. It’ll probably have an effect on yield, but how much, I don’t know.”

“New Jersey cranberry beds are, in general, way behind,” says Dan Schiffhauer, an ag scientist with Ocean Spray. “Normally by this time we would be seeing a lot of hook on early varieties such as Stevens, Ben Lear, Crimson Queen, and DeMoranville, and would expect bloom to begin by early June. This year there are quite a few beds that are just beginning to show hook and bloom will probably start [about] 7 days later than normal.” He has some concerns about yield, as well: “I worry that NJ will have the type of bloom that used to occur when everyone held the water until mid-May. The resulting growth was explosive (with lots of tipworm damage) and bloom tended to be compressed. The net result was lower yields. There is nothing anyone can do about this but hope that the current very hot weather doesn’t persist.” The good news: he has yet to see any tipworm damage.

Dan also suggests that growers should watch vines carefully when the weather suddenly transitions from wet and cool to hot. “Vines that have had little to no heat or water stress can wilt suddenly if beds become too dry,” he says. “It may seem counterintuitive to water more than normal after all the rain we have had this spring but it may be required until the vines ‘normalize’ to the more common temperatures encountered in New Jersey.”

Breaking bud

When it comes to agriculture, too much rain can be just as bad as not enough. And there’s been quite a bit of rain in the area over the past couple of weeks.

“Getting too much rain is not conducive to growing cranberries,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “We’re in the growing season now, but heavy rains can delay that, a little.” It doesn’t just affect the cranberries: “All the work slows down: maintenance, renovation. . .everything else we need to do. So our team has other tasks to work on. We’re rebuilding sprinklers, cleaning up trees, repairing dams, doing anything we can do in poor weather. It all needs to be done; it just means we need to get more done later.”

“The rain and the colder temperatures mean the buds aren’t growing as quickly as they should,” says manager Mike Haines. “Right now in the established beds we should be seeing signs of bud break, so Vanessa, Tim, and I are scouting growth stages every day…but the rain slows that down for us.”

In addition to negatively affecting plant growth, many tasks normally undertaken during the growing season have been delayed as well. “It’s held up some fertilizer applications we want to put on the young beds,” Mike says. “The minute you take water off you want new plants to start growing like crazy throughout the whole season. But since it’s so wet, we can’t fertigate because the beds are saturated already. We can’t use the Gephardt because it’ll get stuck, and planes are a no-go. There’s not enough acreage ready to really justify bringing the planes in, anyway, so those applications are delayed.”

“Planting is stalled as well; we’re still not done planting the Haines variety in Warehouse #1, because it’s too wet for the planter,” he says. “Water is sitting on top of the new growth, so we’re also talking about putting underdrain in there.” There is, however, a bright side! “I can catch up on office work! Right now I’m making a bee map, which will help coordinate the beekeepers when the time comes. We’ll be pretty busy when it finally warms up!”

Automation 2016

Last year saw the introduction of our new automation program, a process that will hopefully increase efficiency and reduce strain on our team.

This year, we’re scheduled to automate 37 pumps. “Our pilot program we did seven; all the new renovation as well as Rainbow Reservoir,” says Facilties manager Louis Cantafio. “This year, we’re doing all the pumps at the current reno project as well as some larger areas, starting with the pumps farthest out, especially out at Sim Place.”

Installation has definitely been a team effort. Fred Henschel has been busy fabricating the brackets for the sensor installation, and then Ernie Waszkiewicz takes them out to the targeted pumps to weld them on. Louis, in the meantime, has been sorting through supplies and ordering the ancillary items the team will need when they start installing the sensors next week. “We’ll have a lot more guys working on this next week when we really kick things into gear,” says Louis. “Joe Lord shipped everything out to us–minus some of the connectors, that kind of thing–but we’re going to do the installation ourselves and in about three weeks Joe will be out here to work on the programming.” Having Joe come out to work on the programming itself is crucial:

“Field data is sent wirelessly to a master controller in your home, shop or vehicle and your Joe Lord System continuously communicates with the network of devices, sending commands to turn on engines and pumps when needed, based on your congured schedules. Since no two locations are alike, customization is vital. Controls are programmed to the needs of each customer regardless of the number of sensors and probes.”

The team is looking forward to expanding the program. “It’s going to give us a lot more control,” Louis says. “The computer actually handles a lot of the start-up and shut-down process, which is what usually takes up a big chunk of the time an operator is out there running water, either during frost or heat.” It helps us reduce our fuel cost and wear and tear on vehicles as well as protecting that most crucial resource for a cranberry operation: water!

Irrigation refurb

A good irrigation plan manages the volume, frequency, and application of water in an organized and efficient way. A clean abundant water supply is only the first step in Pine Island’s water management program; a detailed irrigation routine is also crucial to our goals. A cranberry crop’s needs are met in three ways: rain, irrigation, and soil contribution. Unfortunately, farmers have yet to find a way to control the weather, so they must turn to the things that they can control.

Now that the winter flood is on, our team has begun working on an irrigation refurb. “A few years back we realized not everything was working optimally,” says Jeremy Fenstermaker. “So we started testing the irrigation systems–pumps, nozzles, sprinkler heads, everything–to find out why they weren’t running the right way. Then we made a plan to get everything back up to speed over the next five years.” Jeremy, along with Mike Haines, took some time to review all of our systems and then formed a plan. “Irrigation is the only thing you have 100% control over, so it needs to be done right,” explains Jeremy. “We started out checking the pressure and flow. We knew how many gallons per minute were ideal, and if a system wasn’t reaching that we took the worst ones and decided what needed to be done.”

Part of the issue is uniformity. “There are three different spacings, which means at least three different sizes of nozzles,” Jeremy says. “So it’s a priority to get everything uniform on one system. If nozzles get mixed up, it can screw up the application rate, so we’re trying to get it to where it should be and keep it that way to improve both fertilizer application and frost control. One of the big reasons we’re doing this is that we found out with different spacings there are different rates that water goes on; we want to match it at the rate the soil can take it in, but we were exceeding it in a lot of areas. If the soil is too wet, that can lead to rot. Fixing the flow won’t to eliminate disease, but should hopefully cut it down. When everything is putting water out at same rate, we don’t have to worry about water at different times. The whole farm can run at once.” And since the bogs are flooded, this is a great winter project. It’s a whole lot easier when all the sprinklers from one system are in one box; you can put your hands on all of them.

While Jeremy is working on application rates and while Waldemar Blanco and Bob Heritage are working on refurbishing sprinklers, our Equipment/Facilities team is working on the pumps. “We have a number of engines that we weren’t happy with how they were running this past season, and since the work that needs to be done is considerable, we didn’t want to do it during the season itself,” says Equipment/Facilities manager Louis Cantafio. “We currently have seven systems in here with some issues that needed addressing, and while they’re in here we’re making some adjustments that will be useful going forward. In addition to the repairs, we’re getting them ready for automation as well as making some changes that will be more efficient for the team during frost, during the winter flood, during fertilizer application…anything that could make things better for both the equipment and the team. That’s not the main reason we brought them in, but we’re taking the opportunity to update while the bogs are still under water!”