We Have Fruit

It's not much, but after one year of working the little orchard, we do have fruit. I took these photos and then immediately picked what fruit we had. Our goal is to strengthen the trees this year in hopes of a good fruit crop in the next few years. These photos are apples and one peach.

Fruit Orchard

The fruit trees planted last year have done pretty well. Out of 12 trees, we only lost one, a cherry tree. Here is a photo of one of the apple trees. Although we did not see many flowers on the trees this year, they are full of leaves. I did spray them with Liquid Fence to keep the deer away. We also removed the stakes and strings used to keep the trees upright during strong winds.

February

This month I am focused on the orchard. We planted about a dozen fruit trees last spring and all seem to still be alive. So today I did a little pruning per the fruit tree books. I also fertilized the trees as well as the berry bushes with 10-10-10. We'll know in a few short weeks if this work is helping the plants.

Plants and Trees

5/9/07 Over the past 2 weeks we have planted our garden and established our orchard. Here is a list of the plants, seed or plant and the variety. We'll also keep this up-to-date as to the progress of the plants.

Seeds:
corn - silver queen, golden queen. 5/14/07 good germination
green beans - slenderette. 5/14/07 no sign of plants
lima beans - ford hook. 5/14/07 no sign of plants

Plants:
tomatoes - big boy, whopper. 5/14/07 big boy plants are thriving, but whopper plants seem to be very fragile, and not surviving.

With the seeds and plants, we added fertilizer, peat moss and potting soil. Prior to tilling the garden, we amended the soil with compost from a paper plant. This did add some nitrogen to the soil. I have watered the seeds twice with soaker hoses in the last 2 weeks but am careful not to over-water with the rain that we have had. I'll add photos as the plants germinate.

Trees:
Apple - yellow delicious, red delicious, granny smith
Cherry - monmorency, bing, black tartanian
Peach - elberta
Pear - bartlett, orient
Pecan

Bushes:
Blackberry - apache, arapahoe 6/10/07 4 of 6 plants now have leaves
Blueberry - jersey 6/10/07 all plants now have leaves
Raspberry - reville. 5/14/07 putting out leaves and branches already. 6/10/07 2 of 3 plants with leaves are now flowering and could produce some fruit this season.

The trees and bushes also had peat moss and potting soil added to them. The tall trees have been staked up to prevent breaking during strong winds.

5/24/07 - the blueberry and raspberry plants seem to be doing well. I received them as bare root and soaked them for a few hours before planting. 3 of the 6 blackberry plants seem to be Ok, but are slower. Below are a few photos of growth to-date:

The Orchard

Once the garden has been planted and everything in place, we are ready to move to the orchard. We have just purchased about a dozen fruit and nut trees for planting. Although we have used soaker hoses in the garden, irrigation is going to be our greatest hurdle in the orchard. Trees will be spaced about 20 feet apart with rows spaced wide enough for a tracktor to pass for spraying and grass mowing.

First we measured each row 30 feet apart. We used string and stakes to insure straight rows when we began digging holes. Next we used an auger attachment for our Bobcat and dug the initial hole for each tree.

Then using a post digger, we made each hole at least twice the diameter of the root ball. While planting the trees, we added peat moss and top soil.

Following is a photo of the orchard, week 1.

5/14/07 update. The trees seem to be doing Ok, although some have a few dried leaves on them, even though we have watered and had a good amount of rainfall in the last week. Also, since we have planted the berries, the raspberries have started putting out stems already, so I am hopefull.