Trees at death’s door despite rain
THE trees at the Pratt family’s Traprock orchard are at risk of dying if they don’t get decent rain soon.
If they survive, they’re at risk of flowering too early, impacting this season’s production.
The irrigation dam is now empty and even with the 36mm they received at the weekend, it remains dry.
But farmer John Pratt said the rain caused some of the trees to flower.
“If they get stressed too much around this period of the year and we get good rain in April there’s a chance they could have a big flowering, that’s when the crop this spring can be impacted considerably,” he said.
“A bud only flowers once, so when that flowers that’s it until next year.”
While only a small number have started to flower, Mr Pratt was hopeful through astute winter pruning, he would be able to save production.
“You have to change your pruning to suit what’s already flowered,” he said.
“When you prune a mature nectarine tree you would normally have approximately 2000 flowers remaining in the spring.
“At fruit set, in order to enhance the size of the fruit, thinning is performed to further reduce the number of fruitlets to approximately 200.
“We would probably still get a crop but the positioning on the laterals may be very haphazard.”
The orchard, 55km out of Stanthorpe, has 35,000 peach, plum and nectarine trees.
With cost to re-plant about $25 apiece, letting them die would be dire to the operation, as it takes at least five years to get back into production.
Alongside the orchard Mr Pratt has run sheep and cattle for 35 years.
In the coming week he will send 300 cows and calves off to an agistment property in Longreach to give his sheep a chance at survival.
“That’s the first country we could find, 1200km away,” he said.
“The way the market is going, you could lose easily $200,000 on these cattle if forced to sell now.
“That makes the decision pretty easy.
“We’re better off to move the cattle and spread the sheep out.”