Fruits of his Labor
Photos and Writing by Taylor Swanson
Having an understanding of the kind of work that goes into the apples and cherries customers buy at a grocery store, is an understatement of Peyton Poulson’s knowledge of the Fruit Industry. A Junior studying Strategic Communication at Washington State University, Poulson’s understanding from the seed, to the tree, to the store is comparible to most fruit salesmen in the Yakima Valley. Poulson has done it all from working on the packing line in the warehouse, to pruning apple trees in the orchards, and most importantly being the first ever intern at Yakima Fruit, located in Yakima, Washington.
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Peyton Checking the buds to see whether or not they should be pruned.
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Yakima Fruit has 35 different conveyor belts in this packing warehouse.
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The green end on each branch is the bud of each apple tree and represents the start of each growing season.
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The Cosmic Crisp is so special because it doesn’t brown as fast as others and it can store almost twice as long than other is a CA Room (controlled atmosphere).
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The yellow texture protects the tree and works as a seal to stop peticides and animals that could harm the grafting process.
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Roughly per acre there 400 to 500 trees per acre (all dependent on how the grower wants to plot their land).
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Peyton testing irrigation lines.
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Red Delicious apple tree on a Geneva M-9 root stock (typical standard root stock, produces an average amount of fruit.
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Before the apples are labeled they come through a scanner that takes over 100 pictures of each apple inside and out.
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Yakima Fruit packs all variety of apples as well as year-long cold storage.