Orchard Management, Part 2

Lots of bushy growth from late pruning

As I mentioned last week, John and I have slacked off on proper orchard care the last few years.

I’m not sure how it happened—sure, the weather didn’t always cooperate, and there were the usual family commitments, chicken care, or a million other chores that took precedence. But the fact remains, our apple trees were neglected.

We’d gotten behindhand in two basic ways: pruning and thinning.

Pruning is essential. Apple trees in our climate grow an insane amount each year; lots of our trees grow five or six feet each, with lots of bushy interior growth. Yearly pruning helps open up the middle of the tree—much easier when it comes to picking, for sure!

Pruning ideally should take place during the dormant season, when the tree hasn’t yet started its spring growth—in our area, February is recommended.

The problem is, we’ve gotten a fair number of northeasters in February, making it a challenge for even the hardiest of gardeners to get into the orchard!

But we can’t use wintry weather as an excuse. John and I have often not gotten around to pruning until as late as April. Or even May. And one spring, I think it was three years ago, we didn’t prune at all. The trees turned into monsters! And were that much harder to manage the following year.

Anyway, when you prune a tree in mid- to late spring, it only encourages the tree to grow even more. And you wind up with a bushy tree that is putting its energy into producing leaves, not high-quality fruit.

Pruning, as it happens, works in concert with thinning.  A bigger tree produces more blossoms, which in turn means more potential fruit. A smaller, neatly trimmed tree will naturally have less fruit set.

But you’ll still need to thin. Without it, you’ll generally wind up with a tree that will overbear one year, and the next, produce little or no fruit at all.

Thinning also will help you have larger, healthier fruit, instead of the smaller, even stunted fruit that you’ll often find on an overbearing tree. John and I have also erred in thinning way too late, in mid-summer instead of early June, when the tree has already put oodles of energy into hundreds of apples, instead of dozens.

The rule of thumb: thin your apples to keep about 5 inches between fruits. Apple trees will often set fruit in multiple clusters of three, four, five or even more apples per fruit spur. So make sure to select the most vigorous little fruit in the cluster, and remove the others.

Given this neglect, John and I have often wound up with overgrown, overbearing trees. Which has led me to suspect it may have something to do with our apple maggot problem. It seems to me that with less fruit to attract the maggot flies, Berryridge Farm won’t be such a target-rich environment.

As an aside, the same goes for the neighborhood bears! Without so much fruit at our place, maybe they’ll be less tempted to break down the fences and go on an eating binge.

Back to apple maggot: the photo below was taken the first year we found the damage. At the time, I thought it was terrible! Come to find out, these bits of brown were minor--many of our apples will now have brown tracks and some mushiness all the way through the interior. 

One chore you can do to help this fall: go through your orchard and pick up all the little fruits any tree dropped over the summer. That means less food for the maggot larvae that are living on the ground below the tree.

Years ago, I read about protecting your apples from this pest by diligently enclosing each and every apple in a Ziploc bag. At the time, I sorta cringed. All that plastic! All that time!

But as much as I don’t want to go the plastic route, I’m ready. It’ll certainly save money on buying nematodes. And maybe we’ll be able to reuse the bags.

To sum up, for our nine apple trees, here’s our plan for 2023:

1^st: We’ll prune in February, as orchardists recommend, to maintain smaller, less bushy trees.

2^nd : We’re going to take a pass on nematodes this fall. It’s been too dry to apply them, and soon it’ll be too cold. We’ll apply them only in spring and see how it goes.

3^rd : We’ll thin the fruit early—when the fruits are the diameter of a quarter—to give the tree a chance to put its energy into producing larger fruits, in smaller numbers.

Then we’ll bite the bullet and get out the Ziplocs!

Fairy Day and Your Summer Food Garden

Today, June 24, is International Fairy Day—here’s to a happy day for fairies and fairy lovers everywhere!

My friend Laine lives and breathes fairydom…she writes and illustrates children’s books featuring fairies and she designs fairy toys and fabrics. But her latest accomplishment is her garden. Which is, naturally, a fairy garden!

Being an immensely talented artist, she designed and installed it herself. It’s full of charm and whimsy: delicate little flowers like sea pinks, tiny works of art, colored pebbles, a small labyrinth shaped out of stones, and the piece de resistance… if you look carefully at her fence, you’ll find several fairy doors!

As much as I would love to tinker-doodle with a fairy garden of my own, my gardening efforts are focused on raising food—not that I could create such an utterly unique and delightful garden like hers even if I had all the time in the world! So now, in the early days of summer, food-crop maintenance is front and center, particularly in terms of blueberries, garlic, and apples. If you raise these crops too, here are a few chores to consider.

Blueberries:

Bottom row shows what to watch for!

My bushes are currently full of robust-looking greeny-white berry clusters—which makes it a great time to look for “mummies.” They’re grayish-purple, shrivelly-looking berries that indicate a fungus called “mummy berry,” which uncontrolled, will decimate a blueberry crop. For the home grower, the remedy is to remove the mummies either from the bush, or from the ground beneath after the mummy has fallen off.

Thus, every other day or so, I go into my 2 berry patches to look over the shrubs, and pick off or pick up any mummies I see.  It doesn’t feel like a chore to me—I love just hanging out with my blueberry bushes!

Note: to break the life cycle of the fungus, it’s best to dispose of the mummies in the trash and not in your compost.

Garlic:

If you raise hard-neck garlic, like I do, several weeks before harvesting, you’ll find a sturdy stem with a bud among your garlic foliage, called garlic scapes. In the bud are developing garlic seeds, which look like teeny-tiny garlic bulbs. To keep the plant’s energy focused on growing and enlarging the bulbs beneath the ground, clip off the scape. You can compost them, but some folks cook ‘em.

Apples:

A previous year before we learned orchard management!

Part of good management for your orchard is thinning excess apples. In a good year for fruit set, you might have hundreds of apples developing on your tree, but it’s best to allow fewer apples to mature. With less competition for nutrients and water, the fruit left on the tree will be larger and healthier. 

When the little apples develop to about the diameter of a quarter, remove the excess so you have about 1 apple every 5 inches of branch.

Although I enjoy this task, I’m a little behind on getting started—my Akane variety are bigger than a silver dollar. But this week, I’ve been going full out preparing for a major heat wave. Our region is looking at unprecedented highs this weekend—over 100—and I’m anxious about my carrot, parsnip and beet seedlings surviving.

So I’m heading outside to mulch the beds with leaves and compost, then deeply water them. Then I’ll drape row cover (an ultra-light, polyester sort of “blanket”) over the beds. I’m crossing my fingers these 3 measures will keep the seedlings alive. Whatever happens, the mulch will help build the soil for the next crop.

Free at stores and my web site!

For more tips and strategies for your food gardening, I hope you’ll look at my free ebook, Little Farm in the Garden. It’s available on Amazon, Apple and all online bookstores, as well as in PDF on my website, www.susancolleenbrowne.com !

PS Speaking of fairies: if you love fairy folk and you need an escape from summer heat with a wintertime story, you might take a look at my middle-grade kid's book, The Mystery of the Christmas Fairies!