Now's the Time to Trim and Plant

 

Apple-tree spreaders do their thing

With the weeds just starting their journey to domination, I got busy on some undone tasks. This is the time, friends. Get out there.

Fruit Trees: We cut back our apples and figs. They've gotten so tall that I need a big ladder to get fruit from the tops. While we were at it, I used split branches from fallen maple limbs to make spreaders that train limbs on sides where I want growth. I split the ends of small pieces of maple or use a Y branch, bracing the other cut end against the trunk. When the sap rises, the branch will tend to stay in place. If not, I can cut another spreader.

Too Late for Alliums? I missed the planting-window for garlic and multiplier onions in Fall. First it was too wet, then too cold. Then I got busy cleaning out my campus office. Now here we are, at the end of frost season, planting them. To force growth I'm going to hill them, as I saw done recently in the garden of the Governor's Palace at Colonial Williamsburg.

Hilling has some advantages in our clay soil, avoiding rot. At the same time, in the hot part of the year I'm going to need to weed and water fanatically to get a good crop. As for the hard-neck garlic I love? It will wait until Fall, when I can order more seed-garlic. I'll plant some organic grocery-store variety to tide us over. 

Weeding Before Summer: You really don't want to deal with established weeds and dry soil, so why not get out there now? We let the chickens into the garden all winter, and they loosened even the wire grass. With tiller and cultivator, I got the soil looking lovely. The weeds will return, as always, but they'll be smaller and have roots that are not so deep.

New Tiller: This gets its own post soon, but I purchased a light-duty Stihl tiller to replace the heavy, and not very reliable rear-tine beast I've been using. I'm going to repair the latter and then sell it. The Stihl uses a power-head I know well from our weed-whackers (and it's no wimp; it's a professional model with a lot of torque). I'm getting too old for the rear-tine monster, anyhow, and with our minimal-till method and already amended soil, I just want to turn in ashes and compost. I don't need to bust the sod. For that, I get out a tractor. 

Calling Some Guy: I've a dead oak that needs felling, and it's in an odd place where it might fall on a fence or chicken coop. Then there's a huge red maple that needs a major limb dropped or maybe the entire tree, as it's pulling out of the ground. Enter an expert. I'll get two estimates and the firewood. 

Know your limits! And keep gardening.

You CAN Grow Apples Here

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.

Applesauce! Yes, You Too Can Can This

You need not be a can-can dancer, though that might be fun, to put up applesauce.

Our trees produced about a bushel this year, a record. We were proactive with copper-sulfate spray to thwart blight, and I will try it again next year, 

We also head to Fruit Hill Orchard in Palmyra VA a few times in September and October, as their harvest comes in. We end up with lots of apples.

I found this recipe, perfect for the novice canner, at The National Center for Home Food Preservation, my go-to for safe canning advice. You can can applesauce in either a boiling-water or pressure canner. It cans fast and, in my pressure canner, with only 5 lbs pressure. How fast? I wrote this post while the sauce sat in the canner.

Nothing from the store tastes as good.

Doesn’t that sound like more fun than looking at a screen? So print the recipe, go pick a bushel, and make some sauce. Now.

Apple-Tree Pruning

I am rather astounded that so far in Tractorpunk I have not said a word about apple trees. Perhaps it was humility; a few years and two classes later, I am only starting to understand the principles of managing a few trees.  My trees all looked like the mess shown above, at first.

The rewards of good pruning are immense; there are few locally grown foods with more lore, and more taste, than a good apple.  I began my quest to raise apples with a few varieties purchased from Albemarle Cider Works south of Charlottesville; we planted three trees in a fenced area near three very neglected older trees, intending to bring them all into production. Earlier we'd put two more in a very wild location, a seldom-visited meadow in Buckingham County, where I once saw a mama bear and her three cubs dining on the fruit from a pear tree. At least we'd feed the bears there.

Over the past few years I have attended two pruning workshops. I've learned that must be patient with apple trees, and some pruning must be done annually and carefully. In time apples can be harvested every year, even with the organic methods I currently use. I may eventually resort to one spraying of the fungicide Captan, after bloom and pollen-collection, each year. Otherwise I will just fertilize and maintain the trees.  Our climate in Central VA is changing, whatever some politicians ignorantly claim, in ways that may not permit apple-growing in a decade or so. In the mean time, I'll see what happens.

This time of year, the earliest part of Spring, is best for pruning. Much of what I learned about pruning can be found here, but here are a few other things I have discovered. 

1) Pruning really does help with blight. Our older trees were full of "Shepherd's Crooks" and blackened foliage, indicating Fire Blight. It's hard to eradicate with organic methods, but not impossible.

Last year I pruned all three trees heavily and cleaned up all the debris, then put it in the landfill in a plastic bag. I was told by an orchard manager that burning the trimmings can just make blight-spores go airborne again! Tools have to be clean, so I reach for rubbing alcohol and wipe the blades of pruners and pruning saw frequently, or I make a 1/9 solution of bleach and water and dip the tools frequently in a bucket.

2) Do not fertilize too much. Pruning makes one want to put down fruit-tree fertilizer, but that can be counterproductive. My reading indicates that fertilizing after heavy pruning will produce water-sprouts and lots of foliage growth; such young growth is susceptible to Fire Blight, one of the factors that led me to prune in the first place. Also lots of new leaves in the wrong places block sunlight and air from getting into the center of the tree, something essential for good health.

3) Could a little kid climb your tree? The answer should be "yes." I loved that bit of advice from our extension agent. Here the goal is to make a tree with an open center and not too many branches.

I aim to create a "vase shape" such as in this illustration from Stark Brothers.

While my trees did not get as severe a pruning as shown on the left, I did cut them hard again this  year.  This close-up shows how crossed and cluttered the branches were on a five-year-old tree we planted in Buckingham County and have only pruned one time before:

 

After pruning this tree, it's probably too long at the ends, but now the tree has room for air circulation and light. Next year I'll step back the main branches to keep them from getting too long; long thin branches often break under the weight of fruit.

4) Apple trees are tough. In the classes I took, the extension agents and apple growers stressed that many novices are terrified of pruning, yet trees can bounce back from poor cuts.

In my case, I am certain not all of my cuts are right, especially high in the trees where I cannot get a close look at the buds. There I use a pole pruner. Where it is safe to climb a pruned tree, I will step up to the first branching of major limbs and inspect, or lean a small ladder against a tree. Mostly I use my Felco #2 pruners or a set of bypass loppers, keeping them sharp always with a few passes from a Bergamo sharpening stone I found at One Scythe Revolution.