The Fruit Growers News

Good soil, pleasing climate for growing stone fruit and selling to large commercial farmers’ markets has proven a winning formula for Jim Bittner from Singer Farms in Appleton in Western New York.

Bittner spoke to growers about growing stone fruit at the recent Michigan State Horticultural Society show in December in Grand Rapids.

Bittner and his partner, Tom Singer grow 250 acres of stone fruit and 250 acres of apples on Lake Ontario. “We can grow stone fruit. A lot of people can’t or won’t,” said Bittner “We barely get below 0° in the winter and never hit 90° in the summer. The lake moderates our climate. There’s never been a complete peach crop failure in our area, it never gets really cold,” he said.

Bittner sells sweet and tart cherries, peaches, apricots and plums strictly wholesale to professional farm markets with very little going to chain stores.

“We find they’re (farm markets) better customers who are more concerned about quality,” said Bittner. He said he doesn’t want to negotiate price on almost a daily basis with chain stores. Bittner sells to eight major farm markets that are on high traffic roads in rural areas or on the edge of an urban area. Most of these customers, including some greenhouse operations, are professional marketers who don’t grow produce themselves. He said these types of farm markets are becoming more and more prevalent in New York.

Bittner has been planting more stone fruit and taking out more of his apple acreage. “The stone fruit market is better for us. We can grow them here. We have the right soil, the right climate. We feel we can do a good job here. It seems as though anyone can grow apples,” said Bittner.

Cherries

Bittner said his operation has done quite well with fresh, sweet cherries in-season from July 6 - Aug. 10. He does all new plantings on Gisela roostocks. “We can’t afford big trees. They take too long to come into production and cost too much to hand harvest,” Bittner said. “We’re never the early people on the block,” he said about cherries.

He advised growers to prune Gisela cherry trees in early spring. “If you don’t prune, you’re going to get small fruit,” Bittner said. He told growers if they can’t grow one inch cherries you can’t market them. He doesn’t stake his small cherry trees. Spraying calcium when it’s raining helps prevent cracking of cherries, according to Bittner. He said the Gisela rootstocks act differently at different locations.

Gisela rootstocks need a lot of little cuts in the spring. “The single biggest mistake I see guys make with Gisela is not pruning them hard every year. It’s a different animal than what people are used to. With larger trees you can even skip a year,” Bittner said

“We keep them pruned well and keep on water to get fruit size,” said Bittner about the Gisela cherries.

Bittner said their main variety of sweet cherries is Hardy Giant, with a fair amount of Sweetheart and a lot of Heartland and the Kristen variety

“We never had good pollination for sweet cherries,” Bittner told growers. He said the Heartland variety was very firm and the Somerset has always come through with a crop. “For the Sweetheart we put off harvest until the second week of August,” Bittner said.

Singer Farms typically need 35 workers to harvest sweet cherries in July. “There’s a good supply of labor that time of year,” he said. For picking they now use cherry buckets with foam backs, similar to those used on the West Coast. “Our pickers are paid by the hour, not by the piece. Every time we pay piece rate we get ourselves in trouble,” said Bittner.

“We started u-pick sweet cherries two years ago. It worked quite well,” said Bittner. He said Singer Farms is on a good road for tourism and many foreigners from the Far East appreciate going out and picking cherries.

Bittner told growers that he plans to continue growing tart cherries. He said his 75 acres of tart cherry trees have to be pruned every three or four years.

Singer Farms has joined with four other operations and run their own tart cherry processing plant, next to the farm. They grow mostly the Montmorency tart cherries and some of the Balaton variety. “It’s (Balaton) not a big deal at this time. It’s still a question of how far and how fast for marketing,” said Bittner.

Peaches

Bittner grows 15-20 acres of fresh peaches per year. “If they’re not Freestone we can’t sell it. Even with Red Haven there seems to be a glut,” said Bittner. “If it’s a cling peach you can’t sell it for fresh,” he said.

“I’m growing more processing peaches. I have three different processors all asking for more peaches,” he said. Bittner said there’s a sure market for his 60 acres of processing peaches although you can’t make a lot of money.

Bittner can purchase good peach land at $1,500 per acre. “Peach trees are cheaper than apples,” Bittner said. I don’t want to use ladders. Our land is cheap I’d rather have more land than ladders,”

To sell their peaches they’ve phased out baskets, now favoring 1/2 bushel crates. “Crates are fantastic for peaches. They also cool better,” he said.

Bittner told growers that price discipline is essential to maintaining profitability. “I don’t lower my prices. Once you lower your price, it’s tough to get it back,” he said.

Bittner’s 60 acres of processing peaches in production go for fruit cocktail and yogurt. “I know processing will never equal fresh, but we can’t expand fresh peaches because of the lack of markets,” said Bittner.

Plums, apricots

He also grows 10 acres of European plums and he is testing 50 Japanese plum varieties. “We do very well in the plum market up until Stanley time,” he said. Because there are no plums for processing in New York state, growers basically end up giving away the Stanley variety of plums, he said.

Bittner controls the size of his few acres of apricot trees by pruning after harvest, as they can get pretty vigorous. They harvest apricots at the end of July and the first part of August. “There aren’t many sites that can grow them,” said Bittner about apricots.

Disease pressures

Regarding disease pressures, Bittner said it has been a bad year for bacterial spot, something growers can’t do much about except grow stone fruit varieties that aren’t so susceptible. Brown rot has also been a problem in some years.