The Orchard – "The Captain's Cask"…

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Hey Folks.

I figured I’d give another update on “the orchard” 🙂 When I last posted about the orchard at the end of April, I described the struggle I’d been having simply getting my trees to produce fruit. But, at the same time, I was also hopeful that this would a successful year.

Well… so far things are looking really good. The winter moth caterpillars weren’t too difficult to deal with and the scourge of late spring, also known as the gypsy moth caterpillar, did not invade my trees this year.

All of my apple trees and both of my peach trees have lots of fruit on them right now. I think I need to start watering them a bit more though as they seem to be dropping fruit onto the ground now that the weather has gotten much hotter and the rainfall has stopped quite a bit.

Peach Tree #1 – Early peaches

Peach Tree #2 – later in the season peaches

Golden Delicious Tree

Gala or Cortland (I can’t remember but will know when the apples get a bit larger)

Red Delicious

McIntosh

Granny Smith (only 2nd year in the orchard. Still young and no fruits)

Anyway… things are looking up this year ! Let’s hope the nice weather and lack of insects continues !

-Joe G.

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.