Last week, I finally bit the bullet and mowed the high spots in my lawn. I don't fertilize, pesticize, or weedize any of my lawn and so it doesn't always grow at the same speed especially in the spring time. That is fine by me because it is just a functional lawn and mostly keeps the weeds at bay. I don't have it for awards. While doing that, I couldn't help but check out all my fruit trees scattered here and there. Above is one of two sour cherry trees we have. Last year was our worst year since I planted those trees, producing a cup of sour cherries between them both. Well in fairness, birds got all the ones out front before I did. Still, I have higher hopes for them this year, assuming we can avoid a freeze after they bloom which is not too far out.
Last summer, one of the last two trees from our original wedding orchard, blew over. For the first time in a decade, conditions were right and it had a bountiful load of peaches and when combined with the wind, proved too much for it. The trunk didn't completely break so we harvested a overflowing bushel of peaches from it and preserved them for future years. We also bought another peach tree and stuck it in the ground on the far knoll at our current house. We are on the northern edge, probably slightly beyond, where one can grow peaches. They are generally short lived trees as far as orchards go. This one is supposed to be a climate adjusted one so we will see if it produces more peaches than our old one did.
There are two apple trees in this photo. The front poorly focused one, (I blame the wind and the lawnmower) is an apple tree we planted in memory of my wife's cousin Gabby who committed suicide a couple years ago. My plan is to box up some of it's fruit and send it to Gabby's mom every fall for her to enjoy just as she has shipped us fruit from her backyard most years. When Gabby came to our farm to visit, one of the best pictures of her was one of her picking apples from what is now, the only surviving tree from our original wedding orchard. It just seemed like the right way to honor her.
Very, very late last fall, a patient of my wife gave her an apple tree she started from a seed. I had a couple reservations about it, namely being what kind of seed? Modern fruit trees are grafted and not grown from seed. So if she saved seed from one of those trees, we might not get a apple tree that produces great apples. Secondly, it was way late to be planting fruit trees with a hard freeze literally days away. It doesn't give them any time to develop roots and get situated before hibernating for the winter. I stuck it in the ground anyway and dutifully put up a fence around it to keep the deer from it. So I am quite surprised to seeing it leaf out this spring. It isn't out of the woods yet but at least now it should have a fighting chance.
Finally, although not part of the orchard, it is below the orchard on the steeper part of the hill where I don't mow. When we redid the front of our house putting on a porch and a larger kitchen, we had to dig up some of the landscaping which included my wife's daffodil beds. She planted all the bulbs over here on this knob and they have done quite well and multiplied. Best of all, deer don't like daffodils. They will eat the shit out of tulips but not daffodils. Up in the top center of the background, there is the first reliable sign of spring every year. It is our redbud trees growing wild in the ditch blooming. Three times I have tried various methods of propagating them by using different methods to simulate a seed going through a bird's gut and three times I have failed completely. Someday I've been meaning to mark a really small one and then trying to transplant it in the fall up to a visible part of our yard but I never seem to remember. I've also read that redbuds are notoriously hard to transplant and get to survive.
You say that the apple tree isn't out of the woods yet but it clearly is out of the woods as it was planted in the clearing that is your back lawn! Sorry to hear about Gabby and it's nice that you and your wife wanted something living to remember her.
ReplyDeleteIt brings back a good memory of her.
DeleteLooks nice. I planted a number of apple, pear, and persimmon trees this year, so I'll see how they'll do. I also planted more grapes, as my first batch of muscadine grapes all died when it got a lot colder than it was ever supposed to get in our area.
ReplyDeleteWe planted grapes at our old garden but haven't yet planted any here. It seemed too ambitious to start a new garden, start a new asparagus bed and start a new berry patch, along with some grape vines all in one year. Perhaps next year we might try again.
DeleteMy goodness. Conditions seem to be iffy for fruit tree there.
ReplyDeleteThat is why I tend to plant more than I would ever need in a good year.
DeleteWhat fun - to have new growths and potentials! I love daffodils! I wonder if they will grow in Hawaii.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing not. They are a spring flower hear so like colder temperatures.
DeleteFingers crossed that all our fruit trees produce this year! Especially Gabby's tree.
ReplyDeleteThey have a million blooms on them right now with no hard freeze in sight so I'm crossing my fingers too.
DeleteYou can take 6 inch cuttings right after they bloom, if you have rooting hormone put some on and stick them in a soft potting medium in a warm spot. The seeds have a hard shell so you need to nick the outer
ReplyDeletelayer with a knife or use sandpaper then soak the seeds plant them in soil and let them winter over in a cold spot. One article I read said to put the cuttings in a jar of water and watch for roots to form. You could experiment all different ways in your spare time!
All my fruit trees other than the one gifted apple, are grafted trees. They are thus to be hardier for our area. By taking cuttings, I would lose the hardiness and in some cases, the subsequent fruit won’t be the same as the parent.
DeleteI love how you've honored Gabby! I've never tried to grow apples as they are tricky and require treatments that I'm too lazy to do --otherwise they get lots of pests. My older daughter has two apple trees and is finding that out!
ReplyDeleteWe have had only minimal problems with pests the last few years, as long as we keep the grass mowed short underneath the branches. They aren’t flawless by any means but we can easily cut out the damaged spots and have a lot of apple left.
DeleteWe did learn that planting a citrus tree from seed does not work. My sister-in-law in California sent us a bunch of Meyer lemon seeds from a tree that bore fruits that were super sweet when we tasted them while visiting a couple of years prior. Art grew almost a dozen seedlings and passed them on to friends too. He kept half a dozen of them and none of them bore a fruit. Such a disappointment.
ReplyDeleteYeah, grafted trees are like that unfortunately. I would like to plant some native fruit trees that I can propagate but haven’t found any near me.
DeleteIt's lovely seeing your new orchard starting to leaf out.
ReplyDeleteI ordered a dozen redbud saplings from the state forest service one year, but very few of them are still alive. Some made it though.
I've never been able to successfully transplant or start one. My neighbor down across the drainage from me has about a million ones growing in his ditch. I have only a few across from him on my side of the road, I presume from the birds who crapped out the seeds there.
DeleteI have never heard of growing an apple tree from seeds. I didn't even know the seeds in an apple (from the store) would be fertile! It will be interesting to see what grows and if it produces edible fruit.
ReplyDeleteI've started several apple "trees" from seeds over the years just for the fun of it, thinking I might make a bonsai out of them. They inevitably die off after a year or two. I have always thought it was because without the grafted root stock, they just aren't hardy enough to survive long.
DeleteDecades ago, I transplanted some redbuds and if I'm remembering it right I did it in the spring while they were still blooming because I didn't know any better and it made it easier to identify them. They grow like weeds on the farm, so it wasn't a big deal if they didn't survive, but most of them did just fine.
ReplyDeleteI know it is possible because there are lots of specimen redbud trees around town in various yards. The ones I've tried digging up from the wild though have pretty deep taproots. I need to find some that are a lot smaller and try transplanting them before their taproot gets too big. I've repeatedly tried growing from seeds but have failed in every way going that route.
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