Tag: apple orchard

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Plans for the New Year in the Garden

I have all the usual New Year’s Resolutions many people have, which I will not share here in case I do not achieve them, but I will share my
plans for the garden.  Gardening resolutions have to take the form of plans, not resolutions, because there are so many factors beyond the gardener’s control that may prevent their accomplishment, factors besides, “Well, that cake looked so tasty I just had to eat it.”   Planning the garden in the winter is a
wonderful occupation, because the hot days and hard work are a long way off.  My plans are usually too ambitious, but I enjoy planning most when it includes some dreams.
This year, I have a large area that pine trees covered until we had them cut in September.  I sowed it to rye grass and clover, and I will move the chickens onto the grass, let them eat the cover crop and fertilize the area. The trees grew in clay, and the soil will need some work before it is ready for my orchard.  I plan to till in the cover crops the chickens leave behind to give the soil organic matter.  I do not know when I will get the apple, pear, cherry, and peach trees planted, but I will work towards the eventual orchard this year.  An orchard is an investment in time and money, and I want to make sure the soil is ready, and I
want to make sure I choose the best varieties of trees for my area.
I have read about grafting non-disease resistant heirloom tomatoes onto disease-resistant rootstock. For example, I could graft San Marzano tomatoes, which I want to grow to make sauce out of, but which die quickly in the garden, onto the lower stem and roots of the Celebrity tomato, which resists disease, and get the disease resistance of the Celebrity and the fruit of the San Marzano.  I saw grafted plants for sale in a gardening magazine for $7 each, and they will become expensive if I buy many.  I will spend the winter reading about grafting tomatoes, and will experiment with them.  I did achieve one of my perennial gardening
goals last summer: I grew enough tomatoes to can to last me through the winter.  Every year is different, though, so I am always looking for ways to outsmart pests and disease. 
I want to grow enough Irish potatoes, onions, garlic, and sweet potatoes so I do not have to buy any. The onions and garlic are in the ground now, and I will have to plant the Irish potatoes later this winter, and the sweet potatoes in the spring.  I have grown more than enough garlic for us for several years, and I will keep trying to accomplish the other goals.
What are your gardening plans?  If you have never gardened, it is a great time to begin one.  Do all the heavy digging and soil preparation now, when it is cold, and when warm weather comes you can leisurely plant your garden.  And, working in the garden will complement your resolutions to lose weight and
exercise more, while you’re having more fun than you would on a treadmill at the gym.  Next time I’ll write about my favorite seed catalogs and plant resources, and you can order some catalogs or look at some websites and plan your garden this winter. 
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It’s Time to Prune Fruit Trees

Here’s a picture of my Red Delicious Semi-Dwarf apple tree I bought from Stark Bro’s, www.starkbros.com, along with three other apple trees, about two years ago.  It’s healthy-looking, and gave me a some wonderful apples last summer.  I pruned it as much as I dared, although I didn’t do enough pruning, and I sprayed it with lime sulfur and dormant oil to protect it from pests.  I even managed to keep it alive during last year’s hot summer, and when I had 100 pine and hardwood trees cut from around it, the tree cutters carefully avoided damaging it.  I am happy with the plants I bought from Stark Bro’s, and I want to buy some more trees from them to fill some of the space vacated by the 100 cut trees when I figure out what I want. 
Unfortunately, though, as experienced apple growers will note, the central leader is missing.  Apple trees produce best when they are trained to a central leader, where the main trunk continues straight up, and the other branches grow off the trunk like alternating rungs on a ladder. 
Unpruned apple tree
Last summer, my chickens panicked when I moved their house and they couldn’t figure out where to sleep, and three of them tried to roost in the tree. Chickens want to go to the highest place they can reach when it’s time for bed, and unfortunately for my tree, the central leader was the place all three tried to roost. I described it in detail in this post  http://www.maryannscountrygarden.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-many-roosting-chicken-does-it-take.html.   The central leader snapped, the chickens fell squawking to the ground, and I eventually got them to their beds.
Saturday, I selected the most upright branch, tied it to the stake, cut off the other one, and trimmed the rest of the tree, thinning branches and cutting back the limbs.  I am no expert in tree care, but if you are, please give me your opinion of my trimming and rejuvenation of my tree.  I try to err on the side of cutting too little, but, based on my observation of overgrown orchards, too little pruning is nearly as bad as too much pruning.  The chickens you see in the photos now know where they are supposed to sleep, and I let them into the orchard to provide a little pest control and fertilization.
Pruned apple tree
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We Have Been Killing Pine Trees

I will never forget going outside one morning when my youngest daughter was a newborn and I was unable to do much work to find that a pine tree, which looked perfectly healthy the previous night and indeed still possessed green needles, had fallen across our patio. It knocked down part of the fireplace chimney and crushed part of the retaining wall. I sent my older daughter back inside the house to inform her father that he was going to be removing the tree, by himself, from the patio that morning instead of pursuing other activities.

When my oldest daughter was a toddler, we played in the back yard under the shade of the pine trees one morning.   A wind arose, and during the afternoon, the house shook. I went outside to find an enormous pine tree lying across the area in which we had been playing. It was safely on the ground without damaging any structures. As I recall, it, too, appeared green and healthy. We stay away from trees when it is windy.

Although we carefully surveyed the area for dead or dying trees before we put in a new shed, a large pine, in the inexplicable way of pine trees, suddenly died a couple of weeks after we put in the shed. Its rapid death might have had something to do with the loud chomping from the thousands of pine beetles that have infested our woods. Their chomping was loud enough to compete with sound of the crickets’ songs at night, and they were quickly moving from tree to tree in the forest and had killed or were killing several trees.
Repaired patio with more trees waiting to die and fall onto the patio; the chimney blocks the view of the shed.


The tree was too near the shed, the house, and other obstacles for anyone besides a professional to cut the tree.  Because we would have to have someone in to cut the dead tree, we decided to cut some more trees. In the back yard, there were trees near buildings and they stole nutrients and water from my perennial beds.

My vegetable garden lies in an area that was previously forest. My father cut down those trees, many of which were entirely too close to the house anyway, and stopped when he felt he was too close to the power lines to continue cutting the trees. The remaining trees, however, shaded the garden and their roots soaked up nutrients and water that might otherwise go to the vegetable plants. They were just waiting for an opportunity to fall across the garden or the power lines.
 

The vegetable garden before trees were cut.  We cut the line of tall pines at the end of the garden, and I plan to put in a fruit orchard there.


We had the trees cut a couple of weeks ago by professionals that had all the necessary equipment and insurance. Tree cutting is very dangerous; I will not forget the sight of the man who bravely climbed 60 or more feet to the top of a pine tree, cut all the limbs out of the top, and then cut the tree down above him in sections about 10 feet long. When he cut a section, a rope tied to the section he was cutting and to another tree or a backhoe pulled it away from him and he hung onto the new top of the wildly swaying tree. I am thankful that neither people nor buildings were injured during the work.



At the bend of the tree is a man who has cut off the tree piece by piece, and has now cut off the top.  

God finally answered my prayers for rain, but in His time, as usual. As the men were getting ready to leave, I heard the first peals of thunder of the monsoon that gave us some of the season’s rain, about 4 inches, within a few days. I am thankful that the rain waited until the heavy equipment left; while they worked, the soil was dry and dusty.  Digging up soil with hand tools bulldozers have packed down is not fun.  I have fought erosion by moving some of the two enormous piles of mulch into the areas the soil washes, and I will plant cover crops as soon as I can to stop the erosion and to improve the soil. 

I have plans for my new garden space, and even though the size of the task is a bit overwhelming at times, I will eventually get the work done.  I would like to have more fruit trees, blueberry, blackberry, fig, and raspberry bushes, and grape vines. I will replace some of the pine trees and sweet gum trees with dogwoods and other ornamental trees that don’t have the pesky habit of falling over for no apparent reason, or, in the case of sweet gum trees, strewing balls covered with sharp points all over the yard. Next spring, I will enjoy the exuberant growth I expect from my existing plantings now that they no longer have to compete with pine trees for nutrients.

I do hate killing trees. Many of these trees were older than I am, and they are majestic, at least until they die and fall over on their own. I am going to replant the area with trees and shrubs that will provide us with beauty and food. It’s not as if I’m putting in a parking lot. I have enough mulch now to last me for years, and the tree service gave the trees to a pulpwood company that will turn them into paper and other products.  We have two large piles of firewood.  There is little waste.
 
It will take some time to transform the cleared area into the fruit orchard I want, and in the interim, I will continue to give myself the pep talk I gave myself that encouraged me to begin the process: “I’d rather have apple trees than pine trees.”  We still have plenty of trees in the woods, and many of them are beautiful oaks and maples, trees that don’t usually fall over dead one morning with no warning.