Good afternoon and welcome to Midday magazine for this February 1st, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailoff behind the mic and we're welcoming on this into the studio.
On the phone lines are good friend Alison, John Jack, regional cranberry educator with UW
Madison Extension Wood County.
Alison, good afternoon.
Good to have you with us.
Good to be here.
I'm always glad to take the opportunity to get to talk with talk with all of your listeners.
We appreciate that Alison and you know talking cranberries and Wisconsin.
That's a mainstay that's something we love to be able to do and to be honest the conversation
isn't always too different from years past but this year in particular we are being hit by
record number highs and we're dealing with some different temps.
Our earth is dealing with some different things.
So we're kind of a couple of questions about the cranberry and cranberry growers right now
that I want to get to with you.
What are cranberry growers doing right now on the marshes?
What's going on with that?
Absolutely, I can give you, first I'll give you what a normal winter looks like and then I'll
give you what your looks like.
Good idea.
So normally we have a, the first time there's a good multi-day cold snap.
Cranberry growers will raise water, they will let a good blanket of ice form.
Ideal is like 12 to 18 inches of ice that will form over like a three day period where we have
below freezing or hopefully even below zero temperatures.
The usual enemy is if we get snow on top of that it can kind of insulate and prevent
a good ice formation but this year I'll continue right.
So usually we get our good 12 to 18 inches of ice.
We then drain the water that hasn't frozen back to our normal water supplies and we have the
plants you know kind of in air their dormant there's ice over the top of them so they have kind
of an igloo and that igloo is going to protect them from future cold temperatures for the rest of
the winter and then also when we have good weather later on in the winter that 12 to 18 inches of
ice is going to support us driving on the beds in order to put out a little quarter inch layer of
sand because our soils are so soft and so compactible we can never drive on them during the growing
season. So this winter winter ice blanket is our only opportunity to get out over those beds
and we like to roughly every four years apply like a quarter inch to a half inch layer of sand.
That sand you can kind of think of it like the equivalent of a grape grower is going to prune his
vines so that he's going to clip off the old woody tissue and that's going to cause new
fresh tissue that's going to produce more fruit to form. So in cranberries you know then in
grapes you have to haul that away and burn it. In cranberries instead we place this layer of sand
the layer of sand kind of buries the older woody tissue and gives the plant a hormonal cue to
send out fresh growth and that fresh growth is going to have more fruit bearing potential and then
also the the older woody stems and the older leaves that get buried then go on to contribute to
soil organic matter and let us use nutrients more effectively and they have microbes that help
the cranberry plant health. So it's a really cool like ongoing process of building up our soils
over time with the organic matter from the plant and then the sand. Okay so that's a normal winter.
This winter this winter we have not had a good opportunity to make ice and some growers were
able to make ice during that cold snap a couple of weeks ago but it's now melting and that is
stressful on the one hand if we were to get a sudden cold snap we might be unprotected the way
we normally be protected with our little ice igloo but more importantly this is making growers
stress out about not being able to do their normal sanding maintenance and if that kind of pushes
pushes normal maintenance back for a year we're going to have we're going to have
you know older tissue where we'd rather have fresher tissue. So we are and that's yeah so that's
the very most basic thing there's also some other questions about well a lot of time with
we rely on the deep freeze of winter to freeze some insect eggs and we rely on the deep freeze of
winter to reduce our disease pressure by killing off some bacteria and so there's a couple of
worries about you know what what what else happens if we don't get that deep freeze that
Wisconsin is so used to yeah so I definitely talked about it so feel free to ask questions back.
So science basically else it no it's it's fascinating I can't thank you enough for breaking
that down for us and giving us the comparison of a normal what a quote unquote normal winter
or whatever that is and into this year's winter but with that being said and and I don't want to say
we we you had no necessarily nobody can necessarily predict exactly how things are going to happen
but in the in the recent years I imagine a cranberry growers have had to adapt quite a bit to
different circumstances. Absolutely as I think farmers are one of the first two
notes that you can account for everything except for the weather is going to bring you
and the weather has definitely brought us some weird things in the past years we had that
summer with a lot of smoke overcast from the wildfires in Uganda somewhat recently and strangely
enough it seemed like our crop turned like ripened up and turned color faster than we were accepting
that year we've had really unusual timing of hail storm usually usually for Wisconsin and we
hate to have hailed no matter what haile has no there's no big thing that comes from haile
but we've had hail really early in the year before the cranberries have set their fruit and so
then we had insurance companies saying boy I know how to calculate how much yield loss you had
if we see berries with bruises or if we see berries knocked off the vines it's really hard to
calculate what hailed image is if it's hitting the bud scales and the buds rather than the fruit
so those are in the last you know I've been backing cranberries for I guess about four years now
and in those four years we've had weird hail we've had the you know those really cloudy you know
wildfire smoke and now we've had this winter so there's been a lot of interesting stuff going on
Allison I I feel like this is a bit of a silly question but I can't help asking
is there any positives to this weather um so yeah actually this um unlike hail which has no
bright side the neat thing about this winter in particular um after one thing that people usually
forget about cranberries since they're a perennial crop they have next year's crop already on
the vine so after harvest those cranberry plants actually continue growing they're still
taking that opportunity when they're not growing you know big delicious fruit they are working on
root production after harvest and usually after harvest we might have like a week or two weeks before
we get into full dormancy of winter and the cranberry is kind of do as much root production as they
can during that window um which doesn't always wind up being very much this year we've had almost
two months after harvest during which those cranberries can can develop roots and really store
store a lot of carbohydrate supplies so even though we don't have the normal protection from
frost you know from cold that we would with our eye with our flood and we don't have our normal
ability to sand um we are hopeful that a lot of marshes we're going to be able to gain a lot of
good root production and give those cranberries some extra energy savings for future stresses
finding these silver linings in life are sometimes difficult but they're important and especially
when it comes to this field and when it comes to agriculture when it comes to farmers there aren't
many people that are more adaptable than this industry so feel comfortable with those things and
feel good about some of the stuff we've talked about today but Allison I'm curious do we have any
I I don't mean for you to look into a crystal ball here or anything but do we have any idea of
what this what this weather might do to this year's crop um that is one that I am not able to say
yeah immediately um I do think that the root development is going to be good um I do think that the
lack of killing trees for a lot of our insect pressure and a lot of our disease pressure might be
bad um so whether which one of those winds is still a matter for speculation and we don't really have
you know one one nice thing about working with generational family farms is there's always someone
who says oh yeah you know 70 years ago when I was 12 this happened um we don't have one of these
winters in living memory uh so we're we don't have a lot of you know even if even if someone
foggy memory over the past is is only a guess we don't really have one of these to look back to
so it's kind of going to be anybody's guess yeah I I'm a big history nerd and I love learning
things and so this part of the reason why I love talking with you but also the guests we had right
before you are friends from this torque point boss they had their weekly they had their monthly um
ice carving and they went out on the ice and they carved it they were a little worried this year
about that and we were we were talking about one of the advantages we have nowadays is so much data
of history and so much weather history and things that we can look back on and all that being said
and and and we still there's still stuff that we don't know about there's still things that we
don't like you'd mentioned there that we don't know we more than likely haven't dealt with a winter
like this before but there isn't really any data that tell us certain that like it's certain we
can only go so far back so I think that's kind of an interesting part of all of this and and how
we adapt how we go forward with it um one of the things that we try to do with these conversations
is certainly inform people but also make sure that we're creating a little bit of empathy and
that our our listeners out there are identifying and and having some empathy for our ag industry and
our growers out there and some of the things that they are going through and we're able to do that
through this process you just broke down for us I appreciate that Alison thank you
very glad to I think there's a lot of I I feel like most people you know have more in common with
farmers than they realize and if you if you find yourself stressing about your lawn or your
you know your your apple trees um similarly you know farmers are going through that same thing and
you know and all the more so we're speaking with Alison John Jack regional cranberry educator with
UW Madison extension uh Alison what outreach has UW done lately um the winter is a because
usually our crops are under ice right now um the winter is historically a pretty big time for
education and outreach so we just last week had our annual cranberry school um and that's a two-day
event where we hear basically from all of the researchers and grad students who have had research kind
of make it from the you know the beginning to the middle phases of research to okay I've got
results to present I've got information that growers can take home to their marshes and so we
just had that event in the delves we had about 350 people attend this year um and I'm just finding
which ways up again after uh after helping organize that um and the growers the Wisconsin State
Growers Association also did a wonderful job helping to helping to orchestrate that and as well they
brought in um associate members for the trade show so there is a lot of good stuff um I guess yeah
feel free to ask me uh how did that go no you some of that yeah we're some of the highlights from it
not I I mean going to the delves in the winter isn't always well I mean it can be a lot of fun but
it sounds like you guys had a great time it was pretty lovely um we had um I think some of the most
popular presentations um we had one of the students of the University of Wisconsin Genesis
Dr. Wanzalapa his student presented uh several uh they have had successful fertile crosses of a
cranberry and a blueberry and Fernando brought in some live plants um showing you know here's
what it looks like if you drop a cranberry and a blueberry and they're working on understanding the
genome and seeing if we can't get some of the natural sugar production from blueberries um while
retaining the cranberry's ability to float so it's a it's a tall task but it was really neat to see
you know physical uh you know we got got to you know touch and look at those plants and that was
cool um it's gonna be interesting to see the data that comes from that yes very much I mean
there there cranberries and blueberries are very close cousins um which is why breeding them in
you know the natural way is possible at all but it still has taken a lot of time to find the right
uh the right parents that that are going to make the kind of fruit that we might be interested in
yeah um they also had um we had some presentations on um the micro-horizal partnerships between
cranberry roots and the uh and the fungi that live in the soil and help make for example
phosphorus available to the plant um I'm trying to think we also had presentations uh from we had
asked the researcher panels uh where growers could live and anonymously ask questions to
our uh plant physiologists and our entomologists and our plant pathologists and our weed scientists
and kind of gets the you know the very nitty-gritty how often should I should I look at um
you know how often should I make this application versus um when when I make a nitrogen
application how long does it take that nitrogen to get up into the plant um and I think those
are always really useful for the growers in terms of being directly you know directly actionable
information such a lot of really uh not only great information but I imagine there was a lot of
great conversations a lot of communicating a lot of uh networking going on as well at something
like this which is always really vital in this field as well absolutely I really admire the
cranberry industry for being so uh you know so close and so interconnected and everyone is
willing to help each other out with like oh yeah I've seen that problem before here's how we
tried it hey definitely don't try what I tried to solve it um but there are definitely a lot of
good good networking opportunities and when we have those researchers present that kind of
starts the discussion of oh yeah I was looking at dissolved oxygen monitoring in my water and here's
what I saw or you know I really which dissolved oxygen meter works best for you which one doesn't
doesn't break when you drop it on the floor on the floor of the cab um all of those kinds of questions
too yeah we've all been there you know we've all done absolutely when it comes to the kind of outreach
that UW is going to be doing what's up next um next week on the sixth we're going to be hosting
the nutrient management planning uh training and that is something that UW does in concert with
that cap um as well as the NRCS and so cranberry growers make nutrient management plans for their
marshes uh discussing you know looking at their soil samples and their tissue samples from the
prior year and determining what are going to be the the most efficient rates of nutrients to apply
um we have our growers go through this training every four years to keep everything up to date and as
we get new information from the researchers make sure that makes it onto the marshes and into
application so we're super grateful for our partnerships with that cap and the natural soil you
know the NRCS the soil conservation service so very grateful for those mm-hmm uh and February you
have something uh pretty interesting coming up as well yeah actually so we just about every month
except during harvest um we have our virtual brown bag series so because there are 18 counties
where cranberries are grown in Wisconsin um one of the things we learned during COVID was that
it's really good to meet it's really good to meet together um but when you've got people driving
fourish hours to get to places you can only do that two or three times a year um we do now that
you know now that we've gotten back in the swing of things we do have our in-person meetings two or
three times a year but we also keep up this kind of drumbeat uh we take one hour these um the lunch
break of third friday's every month and have a little one hour presentation that usually is two to
three uh researchers giving you know timely research updates crop consultants talking about what
they're seeing hatching the fields and frost conditions and plant phase updates and so for February
we're actually going to have um two of the farm management specialists with uh the university
Wisconsin talk about onboarding new hires um and business strategy um so we've got you know kind
of when there's no uh when there's no insects to gossip about we can we can work on um helping
our helping our growers um when they hire new people from the community making sure that they get
a good successful onboarding and have successful you know career paths throughout their their cranberry
life so those are those are exciting as well yeah uh and and just like our ag industry uh there
is never you never taking a pause always finding something to do always finding something to keep busy um
Allison if you don't mind uh in in that uh great information you gave us you mentioned how many
counties produce cranberries how many was that again um 18 counties in Wisconsin 18 we have 72
counties in in Wisconsin and 18 of them produce cranberries that's in that's really cool that is
very interesting yeah just thought that was an interesting note about the conversation and as
we're wrapping up this conversation uh Allison what research topics will be big this year
oh we have had a lot of good questions here so if you might notice over the course of cranberry
history we always care a lot about frost tolerance of lines um because one of the most stressful
periods for cranberry growers is in the spring when the plants are breaking dormancy if you get a
suddenly cold night the cranberries might not be ready for it you have to wake up and turn on
sprinklers and make sure that your your sprinklers protect your cranberry plants from freezing when
they're especially tender um that's been an ongoing research question and we'll continue to be
an ongoing research question especially as we have new varieties but then we don't you know we
don't understand the new varieties as well because we don't have 150 years of history with them
um so kind of speedrunning getting all of that information we can get information a lot faster
thanks to the freezers that we have in the lab and we can put plants through you know induced
freezer stress so we've got a lot of frost frost frost tolerance information but we've also
gotten a lot of questions this year about okay what about heat tolerance information
and so our physiologists are planning they have these kind of little like car hoods that are
going to you know basically be little greenhouses that at our research station and find out what
happens if we give the plants a lot more heat than they were expecting um just because as of this winter
people are concerned about well what happens if it's really warm for some reason um
yeah mother nature is kind of um sorry to cut you up uh mom it just was going to say mother nature
is kind of giving us some of the ideas of hey you guys might want to research with this you might
absolutely absolutely we're a very practical people and this is one of the things i mean i love
research in general i really love agricultural research and applied research because and that's
partly my job but it's so connected to what the growers are immediately facing and it is a
grower says oh man i'm stressed about this a researcher says here's how i can set up a project that
will find out what the best thing for you to do about that is we'll bring in a grad student
we'll do the research make it we'll even do the research on your farm um and we get those
information you know that information out really rapidly so compared to the slower branches of
research that are also super valuable you know cancer research and that kind of thing watching the
watching the tight feedback loop in agricultural research makes me feel really proud of how quickly
we like have a question figure out the answer and help growers implement it yeah it's not something
you come across very often in science when you're able to do that when you're able to get those
kind of results that quickly which is is a really unique and very cool aspect of this field
yes i'm very i'm very glad and i know the growers are very glad as well yeah it helps out especially
with the the times being what they are and as my Nana would say you want to make god laugh make plans
and and that's you know we're we're we're trying to kind of do here is is map out something that is
unmapable and and figure something and the the research and the work that's being done here i don't
know if um if people are understanding how important and how great it is to be able to do this
ahead of the game and get ahead of some of these things possibly get ahead of some of these things
it's it's vital to all of this and and and so interesting it's such a great time talking with you
Allison love talking with you we got to do it more got to come back sooner all right i'm always
i'm always glad to so i look forward to the next time
Allison if people have follow up questions one of the more about some of what we talked about
today how can they reach you um Allison dot john jack at whisk dot edu is my email address
a l l i s o n dot j o n j a k at w i s c dot edu um there's also uh whisk crann dot org is the
growers association website that has a lot of informational uh informational stuff um also
cranberry learning dot com um you can also go to frute dot whisk dot edu vex less cranberries to find
a bunch of cranberry information excellent uh wonderful conversation thanks again for the time
Allison you have a great day you too take care you too and we'll have uh we'll wrap up midday
magazine tomorrow on friday's edition of the show be sure to join us for that otherwise you guys
have yourselves a great wonderful day and we will talk to you soon in the later right here at
ninety seven five fm thirteen twenty eight and wfh are we are locally grown radio
