Aha

Recently, Kylee at Our Little Acre posted about cedar-apple rust, a disease that lives alternately on cedar trees and apples trees. The trees take turns re-infecting one another via airborne spores that look like rust. We have lots of cedar trees, and we also have lots of totally messed up apple trees. Hmm...

Even though the tree funk in Kylee's post didn't look like anything I had seen around here, I had sort of a lightbulb moment after I saw the pictures and did some more research. Turns out that cedar-apple rust can take various forms, all of which involve some kind of strange, orange growth on trees in the cedar family. One of those forms is that of a freaky alien brain.


Looks like we're growing our very own tree brain. The little spikes are rust spores, which swell up and float away from time to time, especially after a rain. The spores then attach themselves to nearby apple trees, unless you're lucky enough (as Kylee is) to have rust-immune Red Delicious trees. As far as a plan of attack, our options are either to:

1. Cut down every cedar tree in at least a two-mile radius (will not happen)
2. Remove and dispose of every tree brain we can find (might happen, at least a little)

The apple trees here always get a fairly large amount of rust on the fruit, though no one has ever done anything preventative in the past. It will be interesting to see if our attacking the tree brains this year has any effect on the apple crop. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

On Pruning

Everywhere there are subtle hints spring. The birds are filling the trees, the squirrels are making a mess of the lawn, and the chickens are laying eggs every day. Another sign of spring is some bushes and trees are starting to bud. The sap is rising.

Our adopted apple tree needed to be pruned badly. A while ago we posted about our lack of knowledge on pruning, and we received some very helpful advice. I think we leaned towards what El had suggested and went with our gut.

We knew that the spikes in the middle were sucking all the life from the other branches and if the spikes bore enough fruit they'd be liable to snap. So on the large scale we took out three hefty branches from the middle of the tree. On the finer side of the operation we cut some of the smaller branches that were rubbing against one another.

There's still one questionable big branch to take care of. It's the one that kind of swoops from right to left. We decided it would be best to save that one for next year and not risk shocking the tree any further. Standing back, it certainly looks more like how a fruit tree should.

How Not to Grow an Orchard

We've blogged before about the crappy old orchard that haunts our backyard. And just so you don't start thinking that this atrocity is our fault, I'll make it clear that this is all our landlord's doing. There are two primary factors that contribute to the orchard's craptitude: bad spacing of trees, and bad no pruning. In case you'd like to avoid such a calamity in your own cute grove of trees, I decided to prepare a handy primer on what not to do. I've conveniently provided annotated photographic evidence of our supremely lousy orchard.

1. A five-foot section of an exceedingly tall branch which snapped off under the weight of an unmanaged apple crop and which is now dangling precariously, caught in other branches, waiting to fall and thwap someone in the head.

2. A fifteen-, formerly twenty-, foot tall spike (see #1) which now has no branches at all left on it. I'm sure that in the spring it will send out a tuft of little twigs at its highest point, which will then conceive big, nasty, worm-eaten apples, which will in turn snap off another five feet of tree. We don't know a whole lot about fruit trees, but one thing we can say with certainty is that they're not supposed to have any major part going straight up and down except for the trunk.

3. You'll notice that, except for the trunk, every single branch on this thing is reaching desperately for the sun.

4. Even the main limbs coming off the trunk are pointing nearly straight up, even though they should ideally be at about a 60° angle.

5. But that's what happens when you plant an apple tree directly underneath an older, larger apple tree and then neglect to prune it: the young tree lunges towards the sun. This thing is the Icarus of apple trees.


6. And this tree was so crowded it just flat out fell over.

7. Which this one will do soon.

8. As will this one.

9. And then they will all send up pseudo-trunks like this, to compensate.

I give this whole mess three years. Except for our adopted apple tree, of course. Because, since we're going to get my brother to come here with his booze making equipment and provide us with a nice, big barrel of applejack, we better take good care of that one.

TIMBERRRR!

The volunteer black walnut that has been a pest to our adopted apple tree and nearby tomatoes is no more. This afternoon Meg, Steveo, and I took the first step towards reclaiming the area around our garden. As renters, a consistent obstacle we have to address is clearing out the neglect of former tenants. We're not sour about it because we know that it is giving us the opportunity to learn what to do and not do when we buy our own property.

As I mentioned in the last post, we want to learn how to care for fruit trees. The lucky adoptee we chose had a black walnut that was entirely too close.



As you can see, the tree wasn't all that big, but even at this size, it commanded a good deal of space well beyond its branches. I'll talk about the bennefits of the black walnut's toxicity in a bit, but first there was some fun to be had with sharp objects.


Steve started chopping!




I was chopping!




Meg was chopping! It was anarchy!




Side note: Black Walnut + Tap Root = A whole lot of whacking


The whole project took about half an hour and already the apple tree looks much happier. Now don't get me wrong, black walnuts are not all bad. However, where this one was located was doing more harm than good. If you do have some black walnuts that aren't too close to your garden they are actually quite beneficial. Just this past weekend on "You Bet Your Garden," Mike McGrath said that a good mixture of their leaves can be an effective suppressive mulch that will keep bamboo or other running plants from spreading all over the place.

Adopt a Tree

We have been given the opportunity to try something pretty cool at El Rancho. I don't know if Meg and I have ever mentioned the fruit trees on our property, but they are in abundance and in very poor condition. The owner of the house and land is very fond of trees and allows them to sprout wherever they may. We agree that the more trees the merrier, but our little orchard is in serious need of some TLC. What we are dealing with is crowding and years of neglected pruning. We want to have fruit-bearing trees at The Future House and avoiding what has happened here is high on our list of concerns. Our mission is to save not all of the trees, but start with one and maybe work from there.

Focusing on only one tree, when there are easily a dozen or more, makes the most sense for one very real reason, which is we have no idea what we are doing. Neither Meg or I have any experience with trees beyond climbing and respectful admiriation. We figured the best approach would be to spend this winter reading our asses off on tree care and then test our knowledge on one tree. This way if something goes terribly wrong the casualties will be minimal. The lucky test subject we adopted is an apple tree (we're not sure what kind) close to the chicken pen and garden.



What this photo shows is a few of the obstacles we must address. The first is the volunteer black walnut positioned between the apple tree and the chickens. The leaves and root system of black walnuts contain a toxin that is bad for apple trees. (A little side note, these toxins are also terrible for tomatoes. The roots of this tree extend to where we planted our tomatoes and it severly cut down our production.) So the first thing we have to do is cut down that damn walnut tree. The next thing we will have to address are the six to eight foot spikes in the middle of the tree. This type of fruit tree should look like a goblet (open in the center). We will have to be careful when we cut these out because we don't want to shock and kill the tree by removing too much at once.

The walnut can be cut down now, but we are going to hold off until early spring before we do any pruning. As these steps unfurl, we will be sure to keep you posted.

Cheers.