Adventures in home orcharding

[amh]

Hows the fall harvest this year?

[teddytn]

1 hour ago, amh said:

Hows the fall harvest this year?

Not too great. The deer got all the low hanging apples, I think we ended up with 20 ourselves. 6 liberty apples which were the first we’ve got to try. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular flavor wise, but definitely curious. We planted a bunch of the disease resistant varieties so we hopefully don’t have to spray chemicals. Anyway, the liberty apples taste like a slightly muted pink lady if it was crossed with a red delicious, not too shabby. The rest we got from a pink lady that has been producing apples a few years. The next few years should start picking up. The big fall harvest this year was hardy figs. Off 2 plants we must have picked close to 100 figs, the wasps getting their share too lol. Cherries are usually pretty quick producers, feel like we should get a few blooms next spring. What I’m most surprised for is that my pear trees haven’t flowered yet, 2 of them have been in the ground for 5 years, the other for 4 I believe. Every year it gets a little better!!

[amh]

On 12/2/2021 at 9:07 PM, teddytn said:

Not too great. The deer got all the low hanging apples, I think we ended up with 20 ourselves. 6 liberty apples which were the first we’ve got to try. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular flavor wise, but definitely curious. We planted a bunch of the disease resistant varieties so we hopefully don’t have to spray chemicals. Anyway, the liberty apples taste like a slightly muted pink lady if it was crossed with a red delicious, not too shabby. The rest we got from a pink lady that has been producing apples a few years. The next few years should start picking up. The big fall harvest this year was hardy figs. Off 2 plants we must have picked close to 100 figs, the wasps getting their share too lol. Cherries are usually pretty quick producers, feel like we should get a few blooms next spring. What I’m most surprised for is that my pear trees haven’t flowered yet, 2 of them have been in the ground for 5 years, the other for 4 I believe. Every year it gets a little better!!

The deer are the biggest pest in my location. The pear trees will be your biggest producers in the future; I have a mature kieffer pear that produces more pears than I or my neighbors could consume, so I always let the wildlife get a share. This year I let the orphan fawns and grey fox get the harvest. Great news on the fig harvest, I'll recommend making fig jam or preserves, it is a very decadent spread.

Best of luck with the future crops.

[teddytn]

2 hours ago, amh said:

The deer are the biggest pest in my location. The pear trees will be your biggest producers in the future; I have a mature kieffer pear that produces more pears than I or my neighbors could consume, so I always let the wildlife get a share. This year I let the orphan fawns and grey fox get the harvest. Great news on the fig harvest, I'll recommend making fig jam or preserves, it is a very decadent spread.

Best of luck with the future crops.

Same here with deer. Even though we’re in the city there’s a state park, a 5min drive away and there’s farmland the same distance in different directions, plenty of deer. One of the pear trees I have planted is a kieffer as well, looking forward to that. Respect for looking out for the wildlife, I feel the same way and fill the bird feeders and keep planting flowering plants for all the pollinators. 

[amh]

17 hours ago, teddytn said:

Same here with deer. Even though we’re in the city there’s a state park, a 5min drive away and there’s farmland the same distance in different directions, plenty of deer. One of the pear trees I have planted is a kieffer as well, looking forward to that. Respect for looking out for the wildlife, I feel the same way and fill the bird feeders and keep planting flowering plants for all the pollinators. 

I've found that mass plantings of sunflowers attracts birds an pollinators. Both sunflowers and borage are great for bees and hummingbirds and can be grown with no care. A big mountain lion mauled the fawns mother (the same doe from the garden visitor thread) and luckily they were old enough to survive on their own. The fox are just a cool, welcome natural mouser. I'm tempted to put a live stream camera on my kieffer during early fall.

Edited December 5, 2021 by amh

[teddytn]

Here’s a little spring update. The pear trees had a few sparse flowers should hang a few. Surprised the big pineapple pear didn’t bloom well, I didn’t prune it last year was expecting a bunch. Must be 25’ tall, been in the ground at least 6 years. Definitely needs to beef up a little.The other 2 smaller pears flowered sparsely. If you want to learn patience plant fruit trees lol, anyone that’s planted them will know what I mean. Seems like from the time I started planting them I keep saying 2 years they’ll fruit…2 years later, ahhh 2 more years….2 years again lol.
Anyways, you start learning the trees as time goes by and realizing how to prune them and when kind of just becomes evident over time. Everytime you prune to shape for the future you set back for flowering the next year at least potentially 2. This is no doubt a marathon not a sprint. Especially growing organically. 
Here’s a pink lady that’s been in the ground for 8 years finally getting in the groove. 25’ range. I’ve got the lower half of the tree pruned well, need to start working the upper portion. Should hang quite a bit of apples this year. Hard to get a grasp of how many flowers are on it. Even after thining them out, should have a good haul. All the next stage down 4-6 years in the ground apple trees have a few blossoms. Usually pick the apples off early on these, they’re not ready yet. Still working on shaping these and getting some mass on the trees. Takes a while before they can even handle a load of apples whether they flower or not. No sense in breaking branches getting greedy too soon. Blueberries are in flower and bees have been all over them the past week. Hard t get a good pic of these.@DAVEinMB remember we were talking about mint last year. It can get aggressive for sure this is one no one should worry about cutting back and ripping out huge clumps at a time. ground cover under the blueberries it works well. 

[amh]

Here is a 30 some year old Kieffer pear, that has had no irrigation and has received less than 6 inches of rain for the year and only about 3 inches of rain since blooming in the spring.

The plant has experienced a very hot summer and still has ripening fruit. The fruit are about half sized, but they should be edible.

[teddytn]

On 9/25/2022 at 3:23 PM, amh said:

Here is a 30 some year old Kieffer pear, that has had no irrigation and has received less than 6 inches of rain for the year and only about 3 inches of rain since blooming in the spring.

The plant has experienced a very hot summer and still has ripening fruit. The fruit are about half sized, but they should be edible.

Some deep roots on old boy there for it to produce like that after the summer you had! Fantastic 

[amh]

On 10/1/2022 at 11:26 AM, teddytn said:

Some deep roots on old boy there for it to produce like that after the summer you had! Fantastic 

I'm starting to harvest this week.

[teddytn]

5 hours ago, amh said:

I'm starting to harvest this week.

Awesome, I’m curious if they’ll be juicy or not. Harvested quite a bit of figs this season, some still hanging ti pick after the frosts we’ve had. All the apple trees that blossomed well and held a bunch of fruit into the summer ended up dropping their apples early….always next year. Seriously takes patience. Thinking 15-20 years in ground is probably when semi-dwarf and seedling trees really get in their groove. Happy your tree produced well after the drought you had 😊

[amh]

22 hours ago, teddytn said:

Awesome, I’m curious if they’ll be juicy or not. Harvested quite a bit of figs this season, some still hanging ti pick after the frosts we’ve had. All the apple trees that blossomed well and held a bunch of fruit into the summer ended up dropping their apples early….always next year. Seriously takes patience. Thinking 15-20 years in ground is probably when semi-dwarf and seedling trees really get in their groove. Happy your tree produced well after the drought you had 😊

I gave the first batch of pears to my neighbor, so I haven't eaten any yet. So far, the flesh appears normal, but there are fewer, smaller fruit than usual. Still not bad for 5 inches of rain and no irrigation. From my experience, trees take about 10 years to be hardy to whatever nature throws at them.

[amh]

The drought ended up being a positive thing for the pear harvest this year. Because the pears took longer to ripen, they stayed on the tree through a few frost. The results were sweet fruit that could be eaten fresh. The flesh was soft like a crisp apple instead of the usual hard.

[teddytn]

Finally got some loaded apple trees! It’s only been 9 or 10 years since planting lol. Well worth the wait. One is definitely a pink lady, the other honestly I didn’t keep up with the name after that long and forgot. It may just be another pink lady…Also have our biggest Liberty apple tree with about as much fruit on it, and one of our pear trees decided it was ready to hang some this year. I’ll snap some pics of those when I get back home.