apple – Peacock Orchard

The trees that survived this year

I had little hope for any tree survival this year. Ground squirrels had pretty much killed my oldest apple tree last year. I planted daffodils around it and hoped. This spring the ground squirrels are around my oldest plum tree. It apparently didn’t have enough daffodils or we are breeding super squirrels. Either way, I was worried.

The wind is also up around here and by up I mean I’ve been concerned about the house breaking up several times already. I’ve begun thinking to myself, why do we live here? We should move. Yet, here we remain.

The specialty trees were in our fenced yard. I figured it was guaranteed to be bunny proof with our massive bunny chasing dogs in it. What I didn’t count on was a giant sized puppy deciding to go out and chew the top off of EVERY SINGLE TREE. Forget the bunnies, I need puppy protection.

So the specialty trees were dug up and moved to a fenced off portion and I simply hoped that not all of them were dead. I’m happy to report that more than half survived, including my biggest almond tree.

Almond tree

They look rough but leaves are shooting out of their perfect little trunks and I’m happy, happy, happy!

So we have a medlar, 3 plum and an almond tree that survived puppygedon.

Varieties in the Orchard

I thought some might be interested in what varieties we currently have growing and my opinions of some of them. It is a long list. I’m somewhat eclectic. I do enjoy buying everything and seeing what flourishes. So prepare yourself some coffee as this is going to be a long one.

Apple Trees

Stark® Lodi Apple Stark®– This apple has done the best by far in the orchard. It is our oldest apple variety and the tree is beautiful all around.
Starkspur® UltraMac™ Apple
Honeycrisp™ Apple
WineCrisp™ Apple Co-op 31
McIntosh Apple
Pound Sweet Apple– Alive and well in a Krater. I am excited to see this fruit!
Stark® Golden Delicious Apple– I have quite a few of these (they had a good sale) and they are hit and miss. Some are doing quite well but others are not. They also haven’t branched out at all. They are still stick looking with leaves. It’s a little odd.
Macoun Apple
Freedom Apple
Snow Apple
Hidden Rose– I was over the moon to be getting this variety but sadly neither apple survived. I bought them as whip grafts and I had some issues with both planting and protecting them. The rabbits got to a lot of my whip grafts. I hope to try this variety again.
Dabinette– Cider apple
Jonathon
Fuji
Dr. Matthews
Grimes Golden– I had a few of these and have one survivor. They were also whip grafts. They are said to be top of the bushel as far as taste and cider making ability. We shall see on that. It is still only a few feet tall.
Melrose
Caville Blanc D’Hiver– I keep trying to acquire this variety but it has been a difficult one. I finally bought a single whip graft which sadly did not survive.
Kingston Black– Cider apple
Sops of Wine
Golden Russet– Cider apple
Northern Spy

Cherry Trees

Blackgold® Sweet Cherry– This cherry is proving to be an easy keeper. Both trees survived and have flowered in their second year.
Hansen’s Bush Cherry
Stark® Montmorency Pie Cherry– These trees keep dying on me. I’m not sure why, but they do.
Stella– Bought a single tree from a home improvement store. This is our first year with it but so far it has survived Wyoming winds.

Peach Trees

Contender Peach– Has survived another winter. I thought keeping these peach trees alive would be an issue but they are hardier than I had expected.
Intrepid Peach
Reliance Peach>Both of these peach varieties were dead upon planting last year. One has come up from the rootstock but that is it. They were replaced and we shall see how they do this year.

Pear Trees

Starking® Delicious™ Pear– I am not sure I will plant any more pears. Not a single one survives the winter. I’ll stop thinking about poached pears and move on to something that can handle our conditions.
Starking® Hardy Giant™ Asian Pear
Colette Everbearing Pear
Forelle- I’ve grown this tree and the following trees from seed. They are tiny but doing well so far. Time will tell.
Colette
Seckel

Plum Trees

Bubblegum Plum®
Superior Plum– I bought two of these plums my first year from Stark Bros. They are both still alive, some of the only survivors on the berms (Which I have decided are not a good place for planting in dry Wyoming). They both flowered profusely this year, though very early. I believe that is also due to being on the berms. We had many snows during their bloom and I doubt we get anything from them.
Starking® Delicious™ Plum
Ozark Premier Plum
Methley Plum
Shiro Plum– We have quite a few of these and they are all doing well. This is their second year. Their branching out is much slower than the Superior Plum but they are sturdy and growing so what else can a girl ask for.
Oullins Plum– We bought 4 of these trees this spring. I expected them to be whip grafts. I was quite surprised when they came in the mail and were a good 4 feet tall. The root mass on them was also impressive. I have never received trees in quite this condition before. One Green World is where I got the Oullins, Nichols and Italian plums. I’ll be purchasing from them again. The price is a bit larger than Stark’s but they carry different varieties. They are a few dollars cheaper than South Meadow Fruit Gardens but South Meadow simply delivers whip grafts. So, for the price these trees can not be beat.
Nichols Plum
Italian plum

Other Fruit Trees

Mango Paw Paw– Had a tough time of it last year. I had a single survivor which daughter quickly broke in half right after I took the picture and rejoiced after it. I suppose the lesson here is that two year olds should not be released upon unsuspecting trees.
Briana Apricot– These things were teeny tiny when I bought them. Scarcely a few inches tall. Not much has changed BUT they are still alive, so success.
Cathay Quince– I just bought one of these, not figuring I’d require much more than that. It’s alive and well in the Krater farthest from the house. That krater gets the least amount of water so I’d say these trees must be quite hardy.
American Persimmon– These were also tiny trees upon purchase. I have no idea if they’ve survived their first winter yet. I will say they must taste awful as the rabbits didn’t eat them.
Osage Orange- Planted in a dry, desolate part of the property they have thrived in total neglect. They were small trees though, and some of them snapped under the weight of our last heavy snow fall.

Nut Trees

Black Walnut– A few survivors the first winter only to be completely consumed by ground animals.
Hazelnut– Rabbits love them.
White Oak– They don’t like getting hit by trucks.
Timbur Chestnut– Also tasty to rabbits.
Michigan Pecan– Perhaps the tastiest.
Russian Almond– Eaten but coming up from the root. A nut that is hard to crack (making a joke).

Berry Plants

Autumn Magic Aronia Berry– Both aronias survived but only as they are coming up from the root now.
Viking Aronia Berry
Illini Hardy Blackberry– By far the best berry I have as far as survivability. Takes an eating and keeps on kicking.
American Cranberry– I fell in love with these at first sight. So dainty. So unexpected. So dead. Dang it!
Black Consort Currants– I have three. Two survived. One could even be said to have flourished.
Adams Elderberry– A single survivor and only then as it came up from the root.
Johns Elderberry
Vermilion Sunset™ Goji– So easy to grow. I didn’t expect that and only bought one. It was eaten to the ground but is coming back just fine.
Borealis Honeyberry– Honeyberries are supposed to be native to my area. If they are they just hate me.
Cinderella Honeyberry
Issai Hardy Kiwi– Not sure I’ll bother trying these stupid vines again.
Fall Red Everbearing Raspberry– Yet another berry that should be native but won’t grow.
Latham Red Raspberry
Leikora Seaberry– Doing great in a moderate krater though it’s pollinating buddy bit the big one.
Seaberry Pollinator
Red Mulberry– Unknown. Not sure if any survived yet. Probably not but I like to give them a try.
Apple Rose

Nitrogen Fixing– Nothing more be said about these I think.

Black Locust
Caragana

Early planting, many hopes!

Sometimes you just can’t pick when your trees arrive. You know that in spite of your zone planting before Memorial day is plant suicide. Unfortunately your zone tells everyone else that you can plant early April. I hope for late shippings but we got a box already. Six trees have arrived. These are replacements for trees that died last year. I am fairly certain they suffered root death during transport as they were poorly wrapped and bone dry when I got to them. They nicely replaced the trees and so, after two days in a bucket debating, we planted.

Now I’m debating if it’s even worth it to go mulch them. It’s still horribly windy. Mulch sure does love to blow. I’ll debate it some more as I watch the weather and hope, oh hope!

Some of my hopes have been answered though. Every time I go out to survey the orchard I find things I thought were dead quite alive. Many bushes coming up from the root. Some trees doing so as well. I’ll re-graft them.

I have many seedlings growing away indoors waiting for Memorial day. That magic time when suddenly it’s not quite so risky to venture out of doors. I suspect we will get a few more good snows. Hopefully no freezes though.

I have a special lot of trees shipping. Trees I will plant close and baby. Trees I’m really excited to get fruit from. I sure do hope they will do their best to ship late, as I requested. Please, please ship late!

Now I know this should have been an egg cooking post but I think trees are far more exciting than chocolate souffle. Even though my souffle is amazing!

Dealing with rabbit problems in the orchard

We have a lot of obstacles to growing here in Wyoming. We’re high. We’re dry. We have insane winds. We have extreme fluctuating temperatures. We’ve got a short growing season.

Hmm. Why do we live here again? I’ll get back to you on that.

A lot of these things we just have to deal with. Rabbits, however, can be….dealt with. Ok, mostly I just complain about them, loud and often. I’m not a particularly good shot. Mostly I just don’t care to learn. Husband is a great shot though. Encouraging him to get out there and do some mafioso style hits is the problem. The rabbits don’t bother him like they do me. Probably because the growing stuff thing is all me.

We had a dog who was great at hunting rabbits once. Now he’s dead and our other dogs couldn’t catch a rabbit if we held it in front of their faces.

They're so cute though! — They’re so cute though!

I know how a lot of permies deal with the rabbit scourge. I tried Sepp Holzer’s bone sauce last year. The rabbits appear to like it quite a bit. Utter failure. I do put tree guards on all of my trees that are large enough to support them, and some that probably aren’t. The rabbits appear to like their food wrapped. Leaving low hanging branches for them to nibble is a great idea. My trees aren’t exactly large enough to do that. Every branch is a low hanging branch at the moment. I encourage predators. Unfortunately the dogs don’t. In fact they do a great job of repelling predators. It’s like a bunny sanctuary at our house.

I suppose beyond wholesale slaughter of Satan’s furred minions I have no idea what to do about this rabbit problem. I guess I’ll try to look at the bright side and think fertilizer. Bunny poop fertilizer. That’s something I’m not lacking.

The above pictures are all of the same tree. Please explain to me how the rabbits did that.

Just a fun pic. It’s SOOOO hard to get good pics of things when the instant I focus in on something my “help” jumps in the way.

Mini-Kraters and Swales handling winter melt

The temperatures are rising and our snow drifts are slowly melting. Snow harvesting was a wild success this year. If you’ve followed any previous posts than you know that the snow is a problem for our driveway but the melt is the real nightmare. Our driveway and road turn into a mud pit. So last summer we trenched with our new excavator and the results have been amazing!

That is one fabulously dry road!

The trenches are full and the area immediately around them is saturated, but the driveway has been maintained fabulously. So far. We’ll let you know if I’m still confident about our earth works after a heavy rain.

All of the water kept off the driveway is then trenched to various places. Our swales receive most of it but we also have some retention ponds that get rather full.

The swales harvested a tremendous amount of snow and that’s melting off right now.

The harvested snow was wonderful for both insulating our fruit trees and now for watering them. The ground around the swales is amazingly saturated.

The kraters (some more than others) are still really full of snow. About 1-2′.

They are holding strong and I couldn’t be more pleased with our decision to dig them!

A downside of such heavy snow harvest is that the trees can be covered quite far up the trunk. We’ve suffered quite a bit of rabbit loss. My best, hardiest fruit tree was attacked. I tried to Dr. it but who knows if it will pull through the damage.

Doctor’d apple tree

Osage orange poking out of snow.

Blackberry. I covered them heavily this year as last year they were all entirely eaten away.

As always children running about with moisture inevitably ends with really wet children. I was taking a picture of the gorgeous ice designs in our trench when Son decided to go ice skating and…… well he learned to check the ice thickness before clambering on.

Year 2 planting, what has survived.

It’s been a tough year for plants. We had an incredibly wet spring followed by no rain at all for months. However, that isn’t what the biggest killer of trees this year was, rabbits were.

We made bone sauce and applied it but it did not deter the rabbits at all. In fact I think I can say that every single nut tree is gone at this point. We had some almonds holding out but when I went to check yesterday, gone, super depressing. I’m not sure what to do about the rabbits now. I also saw an apple tree in the cider orchard that had clearly been lopped off by rabbits. I think I may end up opening the gate and letting the dogs in there to take care of the problem. Enjoy a slew of cider orchard photos:

Oh that dog! That turkey too……. He managed to get in once. At his body weight in clover.

I had some amazing help documenting the orchard this weekend. Son was lead photographer and Daughter was official musician.

Other than the nut trees a lot of the trees are doing fairly well. I’d say we had 80% live. An excellent survival rate with my, minimal intervention, approach. The peach trees universally did poorly. 3/4 of them did not come out of dormancy. 1/2 the cherry trees did not come out of dormancy as well. The bushes all did poorly. I’m not exactly sure why. The Goji berry, the bush I thought would be the hardest to keep, is doing the best of all. The cranberries were doing very well and I was so happy with them but…now I can’t even see them. Were they eaten? I’m just not sure. I have requested a refund on the trees that did not come out of dormancy. If it grew and then died because of my planting method I did not request a replacement.

Dead cherry tree here.

blackberry from 2014. It’s spreading out of both sides of the berm now. Must protect from rabbits this winter so I can get some fruit from it.

Black locust which has survived with 0 human intervention and is doing great!

Go PawPaw Go!

Frustratingly one of the paw paws had a single leaf. I was so happy, it lived! Took a picture, turned my back and BAM, daughter killed it. /sigh Maybe it’ll come back?

I was pleasantly surprised to find asparagus growing in a few of the Kraters. It’s also interesting to see the variation among the Kraters. The deepest Krater is doing the best, the widest and shallowest has the least amount of vegetation. The Krater that has a fair amount of that black pond clay mixed in with it is doing the best of all.

Look at that difference and they are literally right next to each other.

The osage oranges I planted are doing amazing. I’ve never watered them. We’ve done nothing to them, but they’re growing so well. I may have to get some more of them. Great natural fence and the fruit is great for livestock feed.

I still have a lot of flowers blooming and a lot of unknown things, as well as turnips and radishes doing their part in the cover crop.

All in all, not a bad year.