Tag: Pear

Holistic Orcharding: Fruitful and Deer-full

Holistic Orcharding: June pears (Source: Geo Davis)

I’m excited to report that we may finally be able to enjoy Rosslyn peaches, nectarines, and even a few pears and apples this summer. For the first time since we began planting an orchard, several trees have matured enough to set fruit.

Fruitful Orchard

Holistic Orcharding: Mulberry fruit ripening in June (Source: Geo Davis)

Holistic Orcharding: Mulberry fruit ripening in June (Source: Geo Davis)

Those bright red mulberry will darken as they soak up sun and begin to sweeten. They’re still pretty mealy (though the birds don’t seem to mind at all!)

The photograph at the top of this post shows a couple of small pears. A couple of pear trees set a pear or two last summer, but they dropped (or were eaten by critters) before I ever tasted them. Most of the pear tress are still fruitless, but a couple small green and red fruit are looking promising.

Holistic Orcharding: Young peaches in June (Source: Geo Davis)

For the first, our peach trees are setting fruit. Heavy winds and rains have resulted in steady fruit drop, but I’m guardedly optimistic that we may actually be able to sink out teeth into a few fuzzy, nectar-sweet peaches soon.

The peaches are the most fruitful of all the trees at this point. In fact, a couple of trees are so laden that I’ll probably begin thinning fruit as they grow larger, culling the runts and least healthy fruit and leaving the best.

The photo below on the left offers a wider perspective on a fruitful peach, and the photo on the right shows a young and almost equally fruitful nectarine tree.

Holistic Orcharding: Young peaches in June (Source: Geo Davis)

Holistic Orcharding: Young nectarines in June (Source: Geo Davis)

The three nectarine trees are 3-4 years younger than the peaches, so I’m curious why two of them are already setting fruit. The third nectarine tree has never been very healthy. Dwarfish and sparsely branched, leafed, I’ll try for one more summer to help it along. If it doesn’t begin to catch up, I’ll consider replacing it next year.

Like the apricot that I replaced this year…

Holistic Orcharding: Transplanted apricot tree (Source: Geo Davis)

We’ve struggled with apricots. Few of our apricot trees are thriving, and one died last year. We replaced it this spring with the Goldicot Apricot above, the only variety that seems to be adapting well. I can report good new growth so far on the transplant, but another apricot has died. Both are lowest (and wettest) on the hill, so I plan to address the drainage this fall. Perhaps the heavy clay soil and high spring water table is simply to much for the apricots to withstand.

Deer-full Orchard

Unfortunately it’s not all good news in the orchard. We remain committed to our 100% holistic orcharding (thanks, Michael Phillips!) mission, but we’re still playing defense with Cedar Apple Rust and other pesky challenges. I’ll update on that soon enough, but there’s another frustrating pest that provoked my frustration yesterday.

Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)

Can you see the munched leaves and branches?

Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)

Another munched branch (and early signs of Cedar Apple Rust).

Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)

Ive you look just below center of this photograph you’ll see where a large branch has been snapped right off. It was laying on the ground below. Also plenty of smaller branches and leaves chewed.

The two apple trees which were targeted by the deer were planted last spring. They’d both established relatively well, but they were short enough to offer an easy snack. We keep the trees caged during the fall-through-spring, but we had just recently removed the cages to begin pruning and spreading limbs (see red spreader in image above?), so the trees were easy targets.

And there’s worse news.

Holistic Orcharding: Young persimmon tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)

That’s a young persimmon tree that we just planted a couple of weeks ago. It was a replacement for a persimmon that arrived dead from the nursery last year (another drama for another day…)

Not only did the deer browse the persimmon, but it ate both leads, presenting a serious hurdle for this transplant. Not a good situation. I’ll pamper this youngster in the hopes that one of these blunted leads will send up another lead, or—more likely, but far from guaranteed—a fresh new lead will bud and head skyward. Fingers crossed.

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June 22, 2017
Orchard Rumination

Apple Blossom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lately I’ve been reflecting on all the trees I wish I’d planted in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007. We’ve been adding new trees for a year now — a half dozen or so each spring and fall — and yet I can’t help but imagine what might be today if I’d started earlier. Fruit trees ten or twelve feet tall would still be blooming. We would have been harvesting apples and pears and plums and apricots and peaches for a couple of seasons by now.

In fact, we have harvested some apples and pears during the last two years, but they didn’t come from newly planted trees. I’ve been restoring a couple dozen gnarly, long neglected apple trees (and two pear trees) scattered throughout the meadows behind our barns. Whittling a third of their old growth away each season, I’ve begun to nurse the old trees back to health, and several have begun to produce palatable fruit.

I’ve wiled away many beautiful hours lopping and sawing from the top of a ladder or winding my way through the limbs like a monkey. I’ve loved every minute of it and not just for the promise of future fruit.

It’s a funny thing, an orchard. So many functions wrapped up in one little plot of land, one little grid of fruit trees. Obviously one of the most important is also the most self evident: an orchard is a neighborhood “market”, if you will. A fresh fruit grocery less than a minute from the kitchen. An organic grocery where I can be 100% confident that no pesticide and no unwholesome ripening techniques have sullied the fresh fruit.

Doug carrying orchard ladder

And then there are the flowers. Gardeners, landscapers, poets and painters have romanced the seasonal blossoms of fruit trees for hundreds of years. I am no exception despite my utilitarian, upcountry ways. An orchard is a geometric bouquet of blooms, an annual riot against leafless canopies and gray, drizzly spring days. And even when blossoms flutter earthward and the boughs fill with thick plumes of adolescent foliage, there remains a subtle nobility in the orchard’s orderly procession.

During hot summer days the orchard becomes contemplative, concentrating on nurturing promises into bounty. The fruit trees reach deep into the cool earth for water and high into the sky for sunshine. They brace their increasingly heavy load against winds and thunderstorms.

And then it’s time for the harvest. Whether a crisp apple plucked during a mid-day walk with Griffin or a pear sauce cooked down with vanilla, cloves and a jigger of maple syrup, I’ve already begun to enjoy the fruits of my labors. This August through October should offer up an even more robust crop of apples and pears. And someday soon I hope to acquire a cider press and invite friends and neighbors for a weekend of fruit gathering and cidering. A potluck. Music in the meadows. And by then, with luck, the apricots and peaches and plums will have begun to produce as well. What fruity feasting we’ll do!

Old Apple Tree; New Chapter (Photo credit: virtualDavis)

During the winter months another often overlooked function of the orchard reveals itself. In order to maintain healthy fruit trees while improving their physical architecture and productivity it’s necessary to prune the trees during the period of winter dormancy. This is a chore, and the bigger the orchard grows, the bigger the chore. But unlike most chores, pruning an orchard is far more than a line item on a To Do list.

There’s a creative element, shaping and guiding the trees’ growth habit year after year. And there is a serotonin inducing pick-me-up triggered by dedicating yourself to an activity during the winter doldrums which will increase summer abundance. An investment in future harvests.

But for me, the single greatest reward of fruit tree orcharding occurs during the off-season. My bride is an avid and dedicated practitioner of yoga. Not I. For me it’s fruit tree pruning. I don’t think it’s a reach to suggest that pruning fruit trees in the late winter and early spring is my yoga. It’s my mindfulness meditation.

And then there’s grafting… But that alchemist’s hobby for another day, another post.

Now I’m off to sleep to dream of the orchards we might have had today if we could have initiated our orchard yoga sooner!

May 2, 2012
Orchard Update: Apricots & Peaches
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.
April 28, 2012