Miracle Apples

Chapter 7

The apple trees in Aomori bloom in May. There was no problem with the flowering. He didn’t spray so the air in the orchards was clean and fresh. Mount Iwaki rose peerlessly in the clear blue sky. The apple trees Kimura had raised by hand were blossoming pure white against the beautiful scene.

Apple and cherry blossom look alike as they are both trees belong to the genus Rosa, but the leaves of the apple appear before the blossom. The white flowers blossom amongst green leaves. They are not as vivid, so apple blossoms are not as popular for blossom-viewing as cherry trees. However, for the apple farmer, it is a sight that more than any other makes the heart sing. Once the leaves and blossom have formed, the apple fruit can begin to grow. Once pollinated, the base of the flower begins to swell. As much of the nutrients, stored inside the leaves, are sent to the tiny fruits as possible. The flourishing leaves promise autumn fruitfulness.

The late spring sunshine in the Tohoku region strengthens rapidly. The leaves get bigger and become darker green in response to the intensifying light. By June there was hardly any of the insect damage he had feared. He felt he was in a dream. Perhaps he’d stumbled on something incredible. Pesticides weren’t necessary to grow apples … . Perhaps it was good that he’d given up chemical fertilizers and used compost? If you could cultivate simply without pesticides, this farming method would spread rapidly through Japan. Apple farmers would be released from enslavement to them. Maybe he would get the glory for it! People talk about welcoming a false dawn. Well, Kimura was literally lost in those feelings as he gazed on apple trees which seemed to be the very picture of health. Things went well, but only for the first two months. Just as July started, something strange happened. The leaves on the apples started going yellow.

‘It really was just as July started. Yellowing leaves started to appear. Yellow on a green background stands out. The yellow apple leaves then fell everywhere.

A few falling leaves would have been alright. When I’d tried reducing the pesticides there’d been some disease. I just thought that, well, I could expect some disease. As I hadn’t used pesticides it was only to be expected. To begin with I didn’t worry too much about it. But it didn’t stop. All the leaves in the orchards quickly began turning yellow, and by the end of July half of them had fallen. By the middle of August, less than half of them were left. The few that were hanging on were nearly all yellow. The trees were just about bare. They’d bloomed in early spring, so apples were forming but, how shall I put it, it was like they were just stuck on a mountain of withered branches.

If leaves get diseased and fall, apples trees will do their best to put out new leaves. But the new leaves that eventually opened immediately became diseased. The disease was alternaria blotch. It’s a disease where dark brown spots appear on the leaves and the entire leaf turns yellow and falls. It had never occurred to me that this kind of damage would happen simply if pesticides weren’t used. The difference between orchards which had been sprayed with pesticides once, and orchards which had not been sprayed at all, was like heaven and hell.

To be honest, that was the only time that I thought to myself how incredible pesticides were. Simply by applying pesticides you could prevent diseases like that! It seems strange, but looking at those orchards and their mountains of withered trees, a fighting spirit arose in me. In early spring when there’d been no problems, I’d not felt so satisfied. After all, apart from not using pesticides, and making compost, I’d not really done anything. But I did know that pesticide-free apple growing was never going to be straightforward, and this fired me up. This was what I’d been waiting for.

I was determined to somehow change that mountain of barren trees back to the sort of green apple orchards they were originally.’

When summer ended and autumn came along, the apple trees in the withered orchards started flowering all at once. It was an unseasonal blooming. Most of the leaves had fallen, then the temperature dropped, and I guess it was biologically like being subjected to spring conditions for the apple trees.