Early Harvest

The first harvest of the season happened this past week at the orchard.  The variety aptly, if not creatively called Early Harvest is similar to Yellow Transparent in size and date of maturity.  The apples are small and only suitable for eating if you appreciate tartness.  I imagine these small early apples would be more suited to pies, sauces or chutneys. 

 

It was very satifiying to harvest the first apples.  After a spring and summer of hard work, anticipation and a healthy dose of skepticism, it felt very rewarding to see the first fruits of my labor.  This is only the beginning of the season and I am looking forward to all the surprises yet to come.  With so many varieties in the orchard, it is sometimes hard to find any information on a certain cultivar in order to ascertain even an approximate harvest date.  The only logical alternative is to walk the orchard on a regular basis, looking for those trees with a few fallen fruits around their trunk and tasting lots of apples.  My time could certainly be spent in less desirable ways.

Catching Up

 The summer has flown by and although this blog has been idle since bloom, the orchard has been a bustling place.  Spraying, mowing, thinning and summer pruning have taken up much of my time, while the apples have grown and the plums have ripened.  Rather than spending what feels like precious minutes or hours this time of year, writing about the past several months in the orchard I have put together a photo journal of sorts.  As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, so this will by far me my longest post yet! 

Fruit set, the miracle of pollination

Baby Pears

A freshly mowed orchard

"Silver Tree" Good coverage of Kaolin Clay

Almost time to thin

Adolescent Pear.  "They just grow up so fast"

Thinning Time

Infested apples are thinned and  removed from the orchard

Sometimes you just can't pick one

Prune plums

The first plums

So many plums

Summer Bounty

Apples are getting big!

Freedom.   A very prolific variety with beautiful fruit

Showing some blush

Paula Reds.  These will come off the tree within the month

Clapp Pears.  Starting to color up, but they still need a few more months. 

Bloom

 Although the rain has returned, the blossoms are out.  I went out to visit the orchard yesterday after not being out there for several days and was struck by the chorus of trees almost all at some stage of bloom.  All shades of pink, white and red brightened the fog veiled drizzle.  The cool wet weather is a far from ideal for pollination.  The majority of pollinators prefer the warmth of the sun and a calm wind.  I was happy to see a few bumble bees buzzing around the wet violets and dandelions under some of the trees, but I am hoping for some drier warmer weather before the petals fall. 

Some of the early blooming varieties already have a light carpet of petals under their branches, signaling the need for the first spraying of the Kaolin clay, which will hopefully help protect the young fruits from European Apple Sawfly, Codling Moth and Plum Curculio all of which tend to find their way into the orchard during or soon after bloom.  If I had more time and resources I would have traps out to monitor the pests and their arrival, instead I will have to rely on the less accurate, but sill useful degree day tracking method to estimate when the first of these insects may pose a threat to the developing fruit.  In an ideal world, I would already have made the first application of the Kaolin clay, but the rain makes applying it almost impossible and if there is one thing I already knew before I got into all this, it is that the reality tending an orchard is more often than not, far from ideal.  Once in a while though, when you are surrounded by blossoms, flitting birds and the aromatic spring air, you forget all that and just appreciate it for what it is. 

King Blossom

Early Spring in the orchard

 The first blossoms opened yesterday on the Summer Scarlet, the earliest variety in the orchard to bloom.  Every fruiting spur on an apple tree produces a cluster of six buds; five centered around a central blossom known as the King Blossom.  This blossom is the first to open and pollination of it is key in insuring good fruit set.  The fruit of the king blossom is often larger than the others in the cluster and is selected at thinning time if one is thinning by hand.

King blossom on Summer Scarlet

The orchard is finally drying out after a very wet April that has left Cayuga Lake (Ithaca's Finger Lake) above flood stage.  With several sunny days under our belt and forecasts for the same, my mind is able to rest a bit, not having to think about spraying sulfur for scab again until the next predicted rain.  The maples have burst in the past week as have the dandelions, laying out a yellow carpet for the bees in the orchard.  There is a trade off when it comes to managing the understory of an orchard in the spring.  The more flowers that are blooming along side the apples, the more there is to tempt the bees, but the same flowers that attract the busy pollinators to the apple trees, also compete with them for attention. 

Pink

I piled up the last of the winter prunings this past week, cutting the branches into manageable sizes and piling them as neatly as possible throughout the orchard.  Once I can find a way to get the trailer load of prunings out of the mud, where it has sat for several weeks, I can slowly continue moving the prunings out of the orchard where they will ideally be burned to keep any diseased wood from spreading canker spores around the orchard.

Clap Pear Blossoms

 Some of the plums already have a blanket of pedals under their branches and the two lonely pears look ready to burst.  The next several weeks will bring new trees blooming every day as the hundreds of apple varieties in the orchard each take the stage.

The Orchard

Another winter has passed and although it may be shy in its arrival, spring is upon us.  The new season has brought with it not only green buds on the trees and blooming forsythia, but also new developments in my life.  This past winter I stumbled upon an opportunity I could not pass up: an orchard in need of a caretaker.  One of a Kind Orchard was owned and cared for by Ray Reynolds and his wife Barbara for many years until Ray passed away nearly a year ago.  For several years now the more than 500 trees comprising almost as many varieties of heirloom and traditional apples have gone untended.  Not wanting to see such a treasure lost, Barbara has graciously allowed me to tend the orchard and take from it what fruit the harvest provides as my compensation.

Winter Pruning

 Taking on such an endeavor feels like going from 0 to 60 in the matter of a few months.  The knowledge I had of organic apple growing has already increased ten fold and I have come to appreciate the value of learning through necessity.  Having taken on this project in mid-February, I spent the slow cold days of winter with my head in books on pruning and organic apple production, taking some of the "warmer" days to venture out to the orchard to make my first pruning cuts and walk in the knee deep snow, up and down the rows slowly getting to know the trees.  March brought more pruning.  As I become more accustomed to the saw and loppers and more confident in my cuts I moved through the trees more quickly, especially on those days when a friend or two would come out and lend a hand.
April brought a cool wet spring that put the trees almost two weeks behind last year (an exceptionally warm spring).  April also brought a scramble to purchase the sprays and equipment I would need to make my first foray into organic apple production.  A twenty-six gallon sprayer, a 19.5 horsepower used lawn tractor and lots of kaolin clay were among the purchases.  Now in these final days of April, I have made my first application of sulfur and piled up most of the branches left strewn around the orchard from winter pruning.  After an exceptional burst of April showers that will no doubt bring a plethora of may flowers, the rivers and streams are swollen and the ground saturated.  Small ponds and mud abound in the orchard, making walking a messy business and getting around with any type of equipment almost impossible.   

The early varieties have reached Tight Cluster, with the laggers still showing only a green tip.  With scab season off to a wet start, the possibility of drier days ahead brings hope.  The first plum in in full bloom, setting the stage for a symphony of pink and white which will grace the orchard in the coming weeks.     

The first plum blossoms