Sweet Cherries Go Under Cover in Michigan
Riveridge incorporates protective coverings and bird netting to protect its sweet cherry crop.
Photo courtesy of Riveridge Land Co.
References to CEA and controlled environments typically evoke thoughts of greenhouses protecting tomatoes or leafy greens. But at vertically-integrated Riveridge Land Company in Grant, Michigan, USA, protected cropping means sweet cherry trees under cover.
If the idea of 30 acres of sweet cherries under protective coverings on an elaborate trellis system sounds a bit spendy, it’s all relative.
Riveridge Operations Manager Justin Finkler reports the cost for the cover system, which has an eight-year lifespan, averages out at about $3,000 per acre per year. The initial installation required roughly 190 labor hours per acre to build the supporting trellis and install the protective covers. Putting the covers up and taking them down costs another 25 to 30 labor hours per acre every season.
But Finkler is happy with the annual outlay — so happy that Riveridge plans to have 90 more acres of protected cherry trees by 2027. That includes 40 acres planted in 2023 and 50 more planted in 2024.
Putting Costs in Perspective
To understand the ROI in action with Riveridge’s sweet cherry trees, it helps to know the land is close to Lake Michigan on the U.S.’s northern border and subject to the whims of lake-effect weather, helped along by extremes of climate change.
Finkler explained that when rain hits, especially as harvest time grows near, unprotected cherries can sustain significant damage due to cracking.
“With us being so close to Lake Michigan in the summertime, we don’t have a lot of time to react to a rain event,” he said. “You get an inch of rain within 10 days of harvest, and it can be a complete disaster. It has happened to us several times.”
The grower’s only choice is to harvest the fruit early or let the crop go to waste. Before the protective covers were in place, Finkler and his team would opt to pick the immature crop.
“If you get one chance to harvest it before you get the rain coming, we usually err on the side of caution,” he said. “It’s really forced our hand to not pick the best eating-quality fruit.”
It was the risk of cracking that finally drove Riveridge to start exploring options for protective cropping in 2017.
“Being able to grow any kind of program or having confidence in any kind of volume throughout the season, you have to have a cover on it,” Finkler said. “Our climate is erratic enough that you have to do some of these things as a countermeasure. It seems like there’s something every year.”
Transitioning Trees to Protection
Riveridge’s hard-earned and hard-learned lessons led the company to start prepping blocks of the orchard for a transition to protective covers. The initial installation of the system, from German manufacturer Voen Covering Systems, took place in early spring 2022. Mature trees already 12 to 15 feet tall on existing acreage complicated the process and the learning curve.
Without the equipment it needed, the company tried renting. Some equipment worked, some didn’t. So, like resourceful growers are prone to do, they started customizing equipment to do the job better and easier. Customizations included skid steer platforms and attachments to simplify handling the rolls and cabling involved with the covers. The grower also switched to high-density, V-trellised, UFO (upright fruiting offshoot) plantings for the new acreage.
When spring frost threatened the cherries in 2023, protective covers went up for frost protection in mid-April and stayed for the season.
“We’re starting to harvest the third week of June through the third week of July, so I didn’t feel like it made a lot of sense financially to pull them back in and then pull them back out with the man-hours,” Finkler explained. “I don’t know if we’ll continue doing that across all varieties on all acres. Some we’ll pull in, some we’ll put back out. We’re learning as we go here.”
Riveridge also added vertical bird netting around the perimeters of all its covered acreage.
“It does make a significant difference as far as bird damage goes,” Finkler added. “When we were picking and packing cherries last year, there were virtually no bird pecks in the packs.”
Hail, which usually coincides with the rainy season, hasn’t hit yet. But the covers took 70 mph wind gusts in stride, with no significant issues.
Inside look at Riveridge Land Company’s sweet cherry protective structures.
Photo courtesy of Riveridge Land Co.
Tallying the Extra Benefits
While the protective covers and bird nettings achieve their purpose, Riveridge is enjoying bonus benefits from its investment. During last year’s frost, Finkler reported temperatures under the covers were 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit higher. Heaters, able to work under the covers, raised the temps even more. (The team used wood pellet fuel for soot-free heat that wouldn’t damage the covers.)
Indirect benefits of the bird netting include pest and disease protection. Riveridge doesn’t target spotted wing drosophila (SWD), but some of the netting is fine enough to inhibit the pest. Rain protection leads to less pressure from diseases like bacterial canker and leaf spot. Finkler said that the netting helps block wind, which may help increase temperatures when needed.
Last, but not least, the cover system helps promote pollination as bees warm up to the under-cover temps.
“If we can gain a few degrees and get the bees to work a little better, we can spread our pollen around,” Finkler said.
Finkler believes Riveridge is the only cherry grower in Michigan covering its crop, but that may soon change. Word about the protected sweet cherries crop is spreading, and growers are interested.
For anyone interested, Finkler has high praise for the system. From a financial standpoint alone, he said, after investing money and labor in planting and maintaining the cherries, it doesn’t make sense to risk a crop. Plus, bringing a consistent supply to market is crucial to developing a strong customer base as Riveridge continues expanding.
Finkler said the learning isn’t over yet: “We’ve been happy with what we’ve seen so far. We’re anxious to learn more as these orchards grow and figure out what we actually can do underneath these covers.”
This article is part of our inaugural edition of CEAg World Insights. Click here to view the entire interactive report.