green, orange and purple - oh my!

some of my favorite colors - particularly for bell peppers. frontyard nursery is in full swing with their veges and i scored some nice peppers.

transplanted from the six packs to these larger pots and they quickly responded.

bare root team for 2010

you win some and you lose some. i had seven trees die this year. because they were purchased in january 2009 and i planted with ammend - fyn - guarantees them for failure. so here are the replacements i will be getting:

nectarine:
juneglo
heavenly white
arctic blaze
arctic queen
arctic star

spice-zee nectaplum
tri-lite peachplum

new players for the 2010 orchard team are:

nectarine - z-glow and goldmine
cherry - mimi royal, royal lee, stella, lambert, montmorency
asian pear - shinko, hosui
blueberry - oneil, misty, bluecrop, blueray, ozark, reveille

most of the holes are dug, but i have some topsoil to move out of the way - to dig others, i need to extend the drip to cover the new trees and blueberries and i also need to noodle on a solution that keeps the bluejays from eating my blueberries.

i have just about filled up the garden and i still have grapes and raspberries and blackberries that i need to have. so at the other end of the yard - a few years down the road, we will see another garden area to house these vines. now, if i could only have time AND money at the same time to get this done faster.

a new discovery results in a new tree...

i ordered my bare root plants from the front yard nursery a few weeks ago. while i ordered some replacement trees that died over the past year - i am particularly excited about 2 of my selections - an asian pear (my first) and the start of my blueberry patch (another post).

since i became aware of asian pears about 20 years ago - i was unimpressed with the texture and flavor. i dont know what varieties they were, but chances are they werent ripened nor picked at their peak. i continued to be unimpressed, that is until a few months ago.

the company i work for has started to offer free fruit to employees (in an effort to improve eating habits and health, and lets just say it hasnt helped my waist line any). this fall, an asian pear caught my eye - it was about the size of a pippin apple and had russetted skin. i thought i would give it a shot - worst case, it would end up in the trash. but much to my surprise, this fruit was fantastic and really changed my attitude toward asian pears - i was eating 2-3 a day, they were just freakin' awesome. it took me a few weeks to get ahold of a box they came in - but i found the name, it was hosui. they are juicy (very juicy - in fact hosui translates from japanses as 'with water'), with a nice crunchy texture and its flavor is very similar to bartlett. it was awesome - so awesome, that i will now have a hosui pear tree in my orchard. the hosui will be joined by a pollinator - shinko - both will be my first foray into espalier fruit trees.

an orchard update

just about all of the sticks have pushed leaves. the few that havent sprouted were newly planted this year - under warranty - from the frontyard nursery - so no worries.

one thing that i have been fortunate over the last two years - no peach leaf curl! i dont know if its the drought and the resulting lack of moisture, my soil chemistry - which naturally keeps the fungus at bay. but what it allows is so far into 2 years of my orchards life - no spraying.

dont get me wrong - i will spray if necessary, but so far so good.

several of my 1 year old cherry trees and nectarine trees blossomed this year - i usually will knock the baby fruit off the first 2 years, but we will see how it goes this year.

44 trees and still looking good.

an orchard is born...

february of 2008 found me digging 27 holes in the area of my garden dedicated to fruit trees. i obtain my trees from my local nursery, the front yard nursery (fyn), in el dorado. i order the varieties i want and get them as bare root trees. not only are bare root trees cheaper, but there is better success rate from using bare root tree's rather than ones purchased in pots.

fyn gets its bare root trees from the grower - dave wilson nurseries, if you dont know what bare root trees are check out the dave wilson website.

dave wilson provides first class trees, grafted on to the proper root stock for our area. now how, you ask, do i fit 27 fruit trees in my area? although bigger than my old garden, it certainly is not a large orchard. well, ed laivo from dave wilson has some strategies for keeping fruit trees smaller and thus allowing normal backyard growers the opportunity to have many trees with successive ripening with multiple varieties. the concept is known as backyard orchard culture - get on their website to check it out.

well, if you read about backyard orchard culture, you get an idea of what i am doing. i will keep my trees between 5-6 feet tall and they are staggered in the area to allow enough room for decent lateral space. trees i planted in 2008 include:

royal rainier cherry, lapins cherry, rainier cherry, black tartarian cherry, utah giant cherry, sweetheart cherry, sun burst cherry, juneglo nectarine, arctic jay nectarine, heavenly white nectarine, puget gold apricot, earli autumn apricot, liz's late nectarine, arctic blaze nectarine, autumn glo apricot, pink lady apple, granny smith apple, emerald beaut plum, dapple dandy pluot, emerald drop pluot, warren pear, golden delicious apple, santa rosa plum, flavor king pluot, flavor queen pluot, sauce zee nectarine and arctic rose nectarine.

as you can tell, i have a thing for cherries and nectarines. following ed laivo's directions - in addition to summer pruning, i prune back about 2/3 of the growth on each tree, in late december/early january.

my orchard isnt stopping there - i have enough room for many more trees that will be planted in winter of 2009 - stay tuned.