Whistling Well Farm - Wedge Community Co-ops

Whistling Well Farm is an apple orchard located in the beautiful St. Croix River Valley. Founded in 1972, the first apple trees were planted in 1980 by Carol and Charlie Johnson, along with their sons Chad and Neal. The co-op has been buying directly from Whistling Well since 2014. Whistling Well Farm’s approach to managing pests is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Orchard. It involves compiling detailed, timely information about their apples and potential pests to ensure that pest management decisions are economically, environmentally and socially sound. (Read more about IPM below.)

This past year, Mark Williams of the Wedge produce department wrote a letter of support for Charlie and Whistling Well Farm and this assisted them in obtaining a $5000 grant from the MN Department of Agriculture so they could purchase a state of the art stainless steel apple washing machine. (see picture below)

Whistling Well Offerings at Wedge Lyndale, Linden Hills and Wedge Table

Honeycrisp, SweeTango®, McIntosh and several other varieties of apples
Two books about Emmy their delightful and energetic Springer Spaniel, written by farmer Charlie; Emmy of Whistling Well Farm and Emmy and the Rude Rooster.
Beautiful fall mums

You can visit the farm and pick your own apples, buy apple pies, pumpkin butter, maple syrup and mums. Don’t forget to bring your coins in their whistling well and make a wish. Proceeds will be matched by us and donated to the University of MN Children’s Hospital/Child Family Life Services. Find hours and more info on their site.

How does Whistling Well implement IPM practices?

Codling Moth
Traps are located throughout the orchard and when 5 moths are captured in a trap degree days are calculated to determine when most of the eggs have been laid. We then use a product called Rimon which is very soft. It does not kill any moths but prevents the eggs from hatching. The first generation of codling moths usually does minimal damage. Many people think we might spray toxic chemicals every week, this is not true. Rimon is a soft spray that targets the eggs of the codling moth. There are usually two generations of codling moth per season.
Apple Scab
We have a weather station in the orchard that is connected to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is updated every 15 minutes with data from our orchard. If we click on the apple scan it will alert us to any potential infection periods and give options for spray materials. Since we always keep bees in the orchard year round we only choose bee friendly materials. We are one of 12 orchards in the state with weather stations from Cornell and all the apple growers in the United States can access data from our orchard.

We only spray when we absolutely have to and only use the softest sprays possible that target specific pests. It should be noted that these are far more expensive than the traditional materials.