Jared Beckner of Beckner orchards in Wellington Missouri was kind enough to come down to Mountain Grove to help us with our pruning workshop that was held on March 7. He suggested taking before and after photos of some of the trees we pruned. We decided to use these trees as “reference” trees – that is we would take before and after photos every year when we prune and we would also record the harvest from those particular trees.

The research plots of perennial fruit crops such as peaches are available for our faculty to use for research. Since fruit crops are mostly woody perennials, plantings need to be maintained for these purposes. In order to keep track of the plantings in general, we choose reference trees. These trees are keyed to our map, they are photographed before and after pruning, and the amount of peaches harvested from these trees is recorded. This way we have an easy way of keeping records on our plantings whether they are involved in a research project or if they are between projects.

Reference trees for the Redhaven peach block are as follows:

Row 2, Tree 20

Row 3, Tree 29

Row 4, Tree 15

(Tree numbers 1=southernmost; Row numbers 1=easternmost)