cider – Peacock Orchard

Futility of Mulching

Nebraska must love me. They have to with all the mulch I’ve put out to blow their way. I’m not quite sure why I still bother. I suppose it’s foolish hope.

There is a reason mulch is praised so highly in Permaculture. Natural mulching is the ideal. Having enough plants and trees that their own natural growth patterns create the detritus that cover the ground. Living the dream.

I’m not living the dream. I’m living the dead land, high wind, low precipitation life. As such I keep spreading mulch out around the property. Then I watch it blow away, to Nebraska. *sigh*

So drumroll please, I’ve mulched the cider orchard. I am about to share my magical mulching secrets.

First I put a collar around all of the trees again. I take them off in the spring because the trees are so small and the collar covers them completely.

Next I water the trees well. It hasn’t rained in months. The cider orchard trees were planted so I can water them, they are expensive.

Next I rip open the glorious bags of mulch. These bags come from my former boss’s residence. I happen to know they are completely organic so I feel no guilt in using the leaves and clippings from their lawn.

I piled the leaves high. I figure if they’re going to blow away best to give them a sufficient mass to move.

I give it a few weeks, or days, depending on wind speeds. I’m happy right now, though.

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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.

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.

Cider Orchard Establishment

I am happy to announce that our cider orchard is almost done. Ok, let’s just say it’s officially started. We took a portion of the backyard and fenced it off. We tilled and planted clover and wildflowers as mentioned in this post. The clover and such are filling in nicely, so are the weeds.

We have a lovely cattle panel arch leading into the cider orchard. I have a kiwi planted near it but that kiwi has been hit and miss for some time so I don’t know that it will recover. If it doesn’t I’ll eventually move some grape cuttings into the area.

We have the swales running in a circle around the orchard. They have proven that they can collect water already, though it was more of an aesthetic and ease of watering thing for me.

The trees are newly grafted heirloom varieties. It took us quite some time to get the infrastructure of the orchard up and thus the trees were in tree pots for some time. These tree pots. They didn’t do all that well in them. It was really hot but I did water them daily. Even still it is my guess that they cooked in the pots. The ones on the outside of did poorly. Some died but the rootstock of some lived. I’m going to let it grow and re-graft later on.

Not all the plants in the cider orchard are cider apples. I have hidden rose apples planted in there because I want to have them close to the house for my personal enjoyment. I also have a black currant bush in there that can be used as a mix in for cider or just for personal enjoyment. Eventually I’ll have a few specialty plums thrown in as well.

The wild flowers and vetch seeds were thrown onto the berm of the swale and into the back of the cider orchard where it is too shady to grow trees and also already has established willow trees.

Where the barn is it is very shady a lot of the time. Thus I am planting a shade garden. I have some hostas, a golden bell flower and a few other things thrown in. The wildflower seeds are doing best in this area.

Eventually I hope to have a lovely table and chairs and picnic amidst the flowers and trees. I think it will be a lovely retreat for us!

A complete yard reboot

We have never paid much attention to the state of our front and back yard. The front has been mostly unused and the back is where the dogs are kept when we aren’t home. Simple as that. At least it used to be. Now we have kids and our space has taken on new meaning. I have been excited to create a playground for our children. It has been going quite well and I’m happy with the results of my labor. Unfortunately the grass and weeds have been a large problem in accessing this playground equipment. We have a mower but it attaches to our tractor and is quite large. Keeping the grass and weeds short around the toys is difficult at best. So we took drastic action.

We rented a tiller, took a day off and tilled the front and back yard. As you can tell, our back yard is humongous. We did make it for the dogs and we figured we might as well go all the way to the barn with the fence. Most of this space is underutilized, except by said dogs. So we decided to cut a part of the back of this yard off and put the cider orchard there. So on top of tilling we also did a small swale in the back section.

I ordered a large variety of seeds. I picked subterranean clover for around the toys and where we walk the most. This clover grows thick and short, we should never have to mow it. Then I ordered multiple species of clover: persian, rose, arrowleaf and ladino are what I remember off the top of my head. This went in the less traveled areas and in the cider orchard. The third bucket is full of wild flowers and vetch. This I sprinkled all along the fence line and in the very back of the cider orchard area. We do have trees in the area already, planted before we moved here. Since they will be too large to put a fruit tree near I have no problem spreading lots of flowers and tall vetch around them. It should be a beautiful location when everything grows!

Of course I was racing to get this done. There was a storm coming and I wanted that rain on my newly seeded yard areas. I made it just in time.

And boy did it rain a ton!