This year marked the second when we harvested apples from the four trees in our little orchard. The fruit was small, sometimes lightly speckled with cedar rust, after peeling more useful for cooking than eating fresh, but still. We have enjoyed half a bushel of apples for each of the last two years. Ours come in very early, in late June and July, in the midst of some of our hottest, most humid weather.
The conventional wisdom in Central VA involves it being too far east into the Piedmont for apple trees: bugs, humidity, and ever-warmer winters are not good for the fruit. All true, yet somehow three of our four trees have produced well. We found three things have helped.
I've written here about pruning and also controlling Eastern Tent Caterpillars. Yet that's only half the battle. The most important change we made involved a timely application of an organic spray of copper sulfate. The product reminds of chemistry-set ingredients from my childhood, and it does need to be applied properly.
Lately I've used Bomide's Captain Jack brand, simply because it's what I can find locally. You don't want to drink the stuff or let it puddle where animals might sample it. After an early-morning application with a sprayer attached to a garden hose, I kept our dogs and chickens out of the orchard from all day.
Organics are not without human-and-animal risks, yet copper sulfate proves far less harmful to you or wildlife than something like Captan. I did use it once, before we had animals near the trees. No longer.
You'll want to do some reading, but if you try to grow apples in a damp and warm climate, you will mostly likely need a fungicide applied once or twice after the tree stops blooming.
We got enough fruit to experiment with spiced apple rings (wonderful) and our usual batch of canned apple sauce (also delicious).
It's apple season! Get picking!
Image courtesy of The Virginia Apple Board.
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