Glen Fruin

Starting material The field-day orchard was established with bagged trees in June. Glen Fruin subsequently tried planting Ellepots – biodegradable paper pots used for growing plants – in the first week of April, but has moved to planting bare-rooted nursery trees in winter. “I like the idea of a longer time in the orchard for the roots to settle before the first growth, but planting in autumn is tricky,” says Heyns. “It’s harder to manage and we weren’t seeing clear advantages.” Textural differences between the Ellepot medium and the soil make it challenging to keep the root volume moist. At the same time, the trees are still in leaf and easily drought-stressed on the frequent hot days. Autumn planting also clashes with harvesting. Whereas the field-day orchard was established with very small nursery trees – 0.8–1.2 metres – Heyns now has access to good quality bare-rooted M.9 nursery trees. He puts down compost covered with a wood-chip mulch when the trees go in. “We’ve also started planting cover crops,” says Heyns. “We have a mulcher that puts the cover-crop material under the trees to form a green mulch.”

Growing the trees The small trees grew impressively in their first season. They averaged 1.3 metres of leader growth, and the best trees put on 2.2 metres. Production was eight tonnes per hectare in the second leaf and 47 tonnes per hectare in the third leaf. In hindsight, Heyns thinks cropping in the second leaf might have been too greedy. However, he wanted to push the envelope to see what M.9 could do. Much of the tree training up to now has focused on developing branches. “The yield we had in the second leaf was up against the trunk,” says Heyns. “Even now, we have some short bearing units.” The original aim was to have spindles with soft lateral branches rather than a conventional solaxe. The ideal would have been to renew branches only, but the current plan is to have semi-permanent side branches and work on those to keep them simple and maintain spur quality. “This is something we thought we weren’t going to do on M.9, but we want more young wood on branches if we’re keeping branches for longer,” says Heyns. “We need to keep good quality wood and light moving through the tree,” he adds. “We’re not going to follow a very fixed recipe. We have relatively skilled pruners, so we have the luxury of being able to implement a hybrid system, and I think our climate also requires it.”

Production up to the sixth leaf The Bigbucks block yielded 60 tonnes per hectare with an average fruit mass of 150 grams in the fourth leaf. The orchard cull was eight tonnes, primarily due to sunburn. It yielded 81 tonnes per hectare in the fifth and 79 tonnes per hectare in the sixth leaf. Cold and cloudy weather in the spring and early summer of 2023 likely reduced fruit set and increased fruitlet drop. Heyns hopes to reach 100 tonnes per hectare in the coming season. Although sunburn remains a problem, he believes losses will reduce as the canopy fills further and bearing units become stronger. Increasing fruit mass tends to bend softer branches and expose previously shaded fruit to the sun. The orchard isn’t netted. “The question is whether I want to plant eight hectares a year without nets or four with nets,” says Heyns. “We have many marginal old Granny and Golden blocks that we would rather replace more rapidly.” He also wonders whether M.9 Nic29 is the best rootstock to plant under nets. “Where we have M.9 EMLA and Nic29 in the same block, we see that Nic29 is more vigorous,” he comments. “In Europe, in many places, they don’t plant Nic29 because it’s too vigorous – they mostly plant T337.”

The merits of M.9 Heyns reports better results with Bigbucks on M.9 than some other rootstocks. “We definitely get bigger fruit and better colour here, and we pick more in the first pick, compared with our lower density plantings on more vigorous rootstocks,” he says. “Bigbucks, while it is full red, you don’t get that intensity of colour and that full red colour on the inside of a tree of a G.778 or MM.109 planting. I think we’ll have better colour throughout the orchard’s lifetime with M.9.” Now that the trees have mostly filled their space and require little further developmental work, pruning costs should be halved. Heyns has already seen picking efficiencies double relative to older plantings. Glen Fruin trims the orchard with a mechanical pruner in spring and may use a leaf blower in future if weather conditions close to harvest allow. The smaller tree-row volume has the bonus of reduced chemical use per hectare. One lesson Heyns learnt from their first M.9 orchard is that this rootstock demands a more robust trellising system. “It’s clear that with our wind conditions, we need lateral support in the orchard, and our poles are now eight metres apart, where previously they were 10 metres apart,” he explains. “We also have very good anchors, and we’ve moved to thicker wire and bigger poles. All poles are now planted 80 centimetres deep and are 100% of row width high. It would be a disaster if we used the same trellising structure as we did 10–15 years ago.” Although Heyns is planting M.9 for all new orchards on more sheltered sites with better quality soils, he doesn’t consider it the best fit for all growers or sites. “For me, it’s unclear whether you will get more Class 1 cartons from 140 tonnes of a G.778 block or from 100–110 tonnes on M.9,” he reflects. “In our conditions, I think G.778 is more forgiving. You can get a very good outcome with M.9, but you must do the right things at the right time to fill your space.”