Replacement Trees

This season we decided to replace many of our JonaFree trees.  These were the first apple trees we planted back in the early nineties.  We kept about twenty trees because we liked the fruit however they have a tendency to drop when they ripen.  This obviously is a big problem for a pick your own (PYO) orchard.  In addition to losing the fruit the clean-up was very time consuming.  Back when we were a conventional orchard we were able to use a spray that held the fruit on the trees during the PYO season, making dropping less of an issue.

The replacement trees will produce a fruit called Sansa.  We are excited about Sansa which is a straight cross between Gala and Akane, and was developed in Japan.  Sansa contains Gala's inherent sweetness along with Akane's disease resistance.  We expect to begin seeing fruit in two to three years with full production in about five years.  By the way that is Raven laying down waiting for me to finish taking pictures.

Not Quite the Way it is Suppose to Work

Bee swarming has become more of a problem for us in recent years. Bees swarm when they decide they (the worker bees) want to raise one or more new queens and find a new home taking honey with them to establish a new hive.  This leaves the original hive weaker, less worker bees, and less honey.  Prior to finding a new home they pause outside the hive, usually in a tree while scout bees search for a new home.  In the past we were lucky enough to notice the bees waiting to find a new home and were able to capture them.  This was always a hit or miss operation, requiring luck and depending on how high up in the tree they were an element of danger. This past winter we read a book describing how to build and set up swarm bait traps.  We liked this idea since it allowed the swarm bait trap to act as the temporary home and took some of the luck and a lot of the potential for an accident out of the capture.  The trap is baited with lemon oil and the dimensions are right for the bees to consider it a home.  The way it is suppose to work is that they will set up residence inside the trap and we would block the entrances at night and remove the hive to an area we are going to set up a new permanent  hive and transfer the bees the next morning.  Well as you can see it didn't quite work out the way it is suppose to.  The bees decided in their wisdom to establish the colony below the swarm bait trap.  We were still able to capture the bees and it didn't require a ladder which was the whole point of using the traps in the first place so we are not complaining.   This is also a way to capture bees for your garden and use the trap as a permanent home.  The name of the book is "Swarm Traps and Bait Hives" by McCartney Taylor.  

White Orchard

This is the time of year were the orchard looks very unnatural with all the apple trees having a white haze.  The white haze is multiple layers of kaolin clay.  Kaolin clay is a naturally occurring mineral that is used in prepared foods, toothpaste, baby power and is were "kao"pectate derives its name.  The orchard formulation of kaolin clay is called Surround.  Surround was the final piece of the puzzle in making organic apple growing appear economically feasible in the Northeast.  Surround works by being an irritant to insects and creates an unnatural environment.  Surround applications are the only practical method of controlling the insect Plum Curculio (PC).  Surround is placed on the trees at petal fall in three separate sprays to create a layering effect and reapplied after rains until the PC mating/egg laying season is over, estimated at early June this year.  It need not be said but, Disclaimer: If you use Surround always follow the label, not my musings.   

Peaches

Two years ago we planted two very late ripening peach varieties between our asian pears.  The thought was that we would replant a new area with pears and mange them organically and expand our nectarine and peach orchard by combining two adjacent fields. As the peaches grew we would cut down the asian pears and rely on the new pear orchard.  The peaches are doing really well as can be seen in the image.   The pears not so well.  The peaches are Flaming Fury Big George and Autumnstark and if all goes well we should be picking them during apple season.  

Raspberry Patch Redux

The right side of the image is a new planting of Himbo Top red raspberries. Folks who have picked raspberries from our little patch in the past will recognize that the image is the area we previously grew Kiwi Gold raspberries. We originally planted Kiwi Gold to have a yellow raspberry to go along with Heritage and Autumn Bitten, our red raspberries. While we really like the taste of Kiwi Gold, when picked ripe, we and our customers found it difficult to identify the color phase when Kiwi Gold is at its best flavor. This difficulty caused us to make the decision to replace the Kiwi Gold with Himbo Top.

Because of disease concerns it is not advisable to replant raspberries in an area that previously grew raspberries so, although not ideal, our workaround was to plant the Himbo Top in the walking path next to the Kiwi Gold and use the Kiwi Gold row as the new walking path. We really like the flavor profile, picking characteristics, and disease resistance of Himbo Top and look forward to trying them in a year or two.

Garlic Harvest 2011

We began lifting the garlic out of the ground on July 16th and finished on the 18th. This season the weather could not have been more perfect. All three days were some of the coolest temperatures of July. As always we placed the garlic in our barn's loft and use commercial size fans to begin the curing process. We began cleaning the garlic on the 23th and finished on the 25th, some of the hottest days of July. But working in the barn on those hot days with the fans going was quite pleasant. The turkey poults are still in the orchard and each of the days we pulled garlic I was surrounded by the poults and their mothers for the entire day, some times I would look up and the poults were no more than 15 ft away eating weed seeds or bugs or both. This years crop of galric looks very good with some real nice size Music and German White garlic. The image is some of the Music garlic crop.

Turkeys that look like Quail

Seeing Turkeys in New England and in our Orchard is usually not noteworthy. Jean and I were moving a piece of fencing last week and heard a flutter of wings. When we looked up it looked like a covey of quail was in the air, about eight birds. We looked down and seeing an adult female Turkey still walking we quickly realized that we had flushed a group of baby turkeys, poults. We have never seen poults fly before and were surprised how strongly they flew. The next day we noticed a second adult Turkey with poults and we now have two adult females with poults hanging out at the orchard with a total of twelve to sixteen poults. Today starts the second week they are hanging out. Very cool.