I’ve been sharing mostly about bees, but there are lots of other exciting things happening around here! We usually have our first apricot “harvest” in early May. I put harvest in quotes because our apricot tree is tiny, and it deserves a little more lovin’, yet it has still given us a few apricots each year. This year we got six apricots! HUGE harvest, right? Each one looked almost perfect, and had a sweet flavor.
Category Archives: Orchard
I Got a Black Eye…
Yes, you read that right, a black eye! The embarrassing part about it is, I gave it to myself! It’s been a month since Kim from Orchard Keepers was here pruning our fruit trees, and I’m still working on the clean up. Today, I was determined to get the rest of it done!
After getting dressed in my “tick proof” garden clothes (someday I’ll share a picture, it’s quite the outfit!), I dragged all my gear, including my new loppers out to the orchard, and I got busy cutting up branches into kindling. A few weeks ago, I did this chore with medium sized pruning shears, and it took forever! Today using loppers, things move faster, it made cutting branches easy. I was in a groove, and feeling confident I would finish today. Then, I had a little mishap with my new tool. I got my first black eye, and I gave it to myself! Continue reading
Orchard Prune Day with Pictures
Thankfully our trees have provided fruit, even though we given them very little love, since we moved in. After attending the Fruit Tree Q&A, I realized they desperately needed a major pruning. I had no experience pruning trees or bushes, so there was no way I was going to do it myself this year! Good thing for me, there is a local company dedicated to teaching orchard maintenance. Today, Kim from Orchard Keepers spent a full day pruning all of our trees! She let me spend the first couple hours watching and learning from her. It was information overload, but I took a few notes, and hopefully I can do the next prune myself!
She showed me how to identify one-year old wood, two-year old wood, and so on. The smoother the wood, the younger it is. She was able to give me a rough guess of their age. I thought the smaller trees were young; however, looking at the wood on the trunk, she thought most of the trees were 20 -30 years old. I was shocked! Based on their age, she suggested planting a couple new trees this spring. While that sounds exciting, I’m not sure if that’ll happen since I barely know how to maintain these trees! Continue reading
Honeychick Homestead 