What the hell is this?

After witnessing the fantastic results of Meg's pruning the other day, we thought we would scope out any other trees that need some lopper love. On our journey we spied a mass of eggs left by some kind of insect mathematician. They're cool looking, but if it's bad I want to squish it. Chances are it's a pest (that's just the way this place works), but if it so happens to be a pest eater, well then I think we may want to let it live (I'm convinced that God is a gardener).

If any of you know what in the blazes these damn things might be, before they hatch, please send us a shout.

Bring out your dead.

The beautiful thing about spring is that it is so much easier to identify dead branches for pruning. If I haven't led on to this earlier, Meg is extremely talented with a bow saw and a set of loppers.


On a number of occasions we have shared with you stories about the nightmare of an orchard that is festering in our backyard. Recently Meg has said to hell with the landlord and has started to do some preventative maintenance to these poor neglected trees. What she did was look for any branch she could reach that didn't have leaf buds and removed it. Over all the project took her about three hours. I think the before and after shots are pretty damn impressive.

Where was I during all of this? Well someone has to weed the garden and our lettuce needed a sun screen. Besides, we only have one saw.

*We would like to make an apology to those of you who have left comments this week and have yet to receive a reply. Meg and I have been totally busy lately with student needs, garden needs, need a full time job with benefits needs, and whatever else this wonderful life has to throw at us needs. We love the comments and please keep them coming; I get worried that you might be dead in some ditch if we don't hear from you once in a while. We'll back at you soon.

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.

The Sap is Rising

The other day I had the privilege to acquaint myself with a new blog on the blogosphere called Life at Dogfight Cove. They started the site this month, so this is a great opportunity to read it from the start. The writing is great; it's got a good home grown feel.

Polarbear's (she's the blogger) last post mentioned, amongst many other projects, pruning her fruit trees. This has been another reminder that the sap will be rising soon and the season for growing will soon be upon us. One of the projects that we really need to focus on in the coming weeks, like Polarbear, is the pruning of our adopted apple tree.


To be quite honest, we're feeling like our resources for this project may be a bit slim. Probably the most useful source I've found is a section on fruit tree pruning in the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening. I think we have a pretty good idea of how to do the cuttings, but which ones to cut is still a bit foggy.


Let's remember now that this tree hasn't been pruned in at least seven years. If we were to cut all of the branches suggested by the books we've read, we'd be left with nothing more than a stump. I know we should take it slow, so what branches should we look for to absolutely remove? I think we're leaning towards cutting all the branches that are rubbing and maybe just a spike or two from the middle. If you have any experience with this, please send it our way.

Cheers

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.

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.