An early and mostly temperate spring has given us a jump start in Rosslyn’s gardens and meadows. The new orchard behind the carriage barn, already planted with plum trees and pear trees, has almost doubled in size over the last couple of weeks with the addition of apricots and peaches.
Doug Decker, our carpenter-turned-jack-of-all-trades-handyman who diligently caretakes Rosslyn, has planted eight new trees in the orchard, and last week’s rain, rain, rain will help the young trees overcome transplant shock. The new additions include two each of the following:
- Peach Reliance
- Peach Contender
- Apricot Sugar
- Apricot Harlayne
Despite the fact that many people opt for dwarf trees nowadays, all the the trees in our orchard will grow to full size. Full sized trees tend to be more cold hardy than the dwarfs, they don’t require lifelong staking to stabilize the trunks and they place the fruit high enough that the deer pose less of a threat.
In the image above, Doug heads out of the barn — cell phone to ear, cruising on the John Deere Gator — to plant the newly arrived fruit trees. Susan jokes that the reason many of the fellows like to work for us is that they can ride around in the Gator. She may be right. I’ll look for some fun photos to pass along. And I promise to post some orchard shots too!
Although the fruit trees in the new orchard have been our fruit tree focus over the last year, I continue to prune and restore the old apple trees. And last fall we planted some new apple trees too. More apple trees will be planted later this spring and fall.
