April 2017 – "The Captain's Cask"…

For the past five years I have been attempting to grow apples in my yard. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much success.

Who would have thought that growing an apple would be so damn difficult ?

I figured I’d just drive down to the tree nursery, pick up a few apple trees, dig a few holes, drop the trees into the holes, water and wait for apples to grow…

My first year, I planted my trees, 3 or 4 if I recall correctly. Within two weeks of planting, half of the leaves had been eaten by winter moth caterpillars. I couldn’t believe it. Where the hell did they come from ? Literally, one day the new trees were looking good and then before I knew it they were half dead. Needless to say, my crop of apples may have reached a grand total of 5.

Over the next 4-5 years, if it wasn’t one thing it was another… winter moths, gypsy moths, Japanese beetles, rot, and/or warm weather in late winter followed by a cold snap causing the trees to bud then freeze (resulting in no buds at all)… my best crop for apples over that entire time span has been about 8. And, I lost a couple of trees completely due to them not being able to recover from the insects feasting on them.

BUT ! There is always hope !

This year, the weather has cooperated very nicely and I was able to keep the winter moth caterpillar population under control (at least as of this date 4/30/2017). Hopefully, they don’t all of a sudden appear out of nowhere again.

All 6 of my apple trees, and both peach trees, are flowering nicely right now ! Each tree looks better than it ever has before.

Here are some pictures from April 23rd… the trees are just starting leaf out and bud.