Today I headed out in the orchard in
between bouts of rain and inspected my trees. The cherry trees are in full
bloom, their leaves lush and green, while tiny, hard, green cherries grown on
long spindly stalks. Meanwhile tiny buds are emerging on the peach tree, small
apricots are forming and the apple buds are starting to pop out as well. All of
which has made me like a nervous parent, pacing between the trees, looking for
signs of stress and disease. Last year the trees were yearning for more water
and had been neglected for a while. Some showed signs of disease last year but
we had focused this year on trying to get them as healthy as possible so that
they could fight against disease.
As I wandered in the orchard though, I saw
some worrying signs. A gummy residue on the branches of the apricot, a couple
of worrying holes in the cherry leaves, some curl on the leaves of the peach.
All signs of bugs and disease. Inside to my bible of organic fruit growing and
I read furiously to try and work out what I can do to tend for my trees.
The apricots appear to have gummosis and
this will be the result of us pruning them too late. It turns out we should
have pruned them in summer after their fruiting season as trees pruned later in
winter will be more susceptible to gummosis. Our apricot trees may not give us
much of a harvest either as the fruit flowers form on second year or older
fruit. So our theory of going hard with pruning with the apricots has been an
ill-advised adventure! Ah well, it’s all part of the learning journey. I may
not do as much pruning this summer after fruiting (if we have any) and I’ll
know to treat the pruning cuts with a biodynamic tree paste which can be made
with our cow manure (among other things).
One of the peach trees, meanwhile, looks
like it is suffering from leaf curl. It’s a fairly young, spindly looking tree,
which is probably why it’s been susceptible to leaf curl as my bible tells me
that the key to organic control with peaches is overall tree health. That means
that our original plan of getting the trees strong and healthy with food and
water was a good one! Seems like a
compost tea might be useful for this particular peach to try and get it through
the harsh summer season.
While the cherry trees look lush and
healthy at the moment I am paranoid about them redeveloping cherry slug which
had decimated the leaves of the trees last year when we arrived. One of the
trees looked like it had a few leaves with holes and so I’m on the lookout for
the tiny black slugs. I’d tried to prevent them occurring this year by treating
the base of the trees with ash from the wood fire as this makes it more
difficult for the slugs to emerge in spring (they burrow down into the earth
below the tree over winter). I’d then read that it’s also a good idea to spread
newspaper and mulch around the base of the trees in early spring to stop the
cherry slugs emerging, and while this has been on my to do list for the last
couple of weeks I hadn’t been able to get to this. So, seeing some holes has
only fueled my paranoia and so I think I’ll take some action to ensure that
slugs don’t eat all my cherries. According to the organic bible the key to this
is molasses spray, a spray made, not surprisingly with molasses, water and
liquid soap. You spray this on the leaves and apparently, so say my bible, the
caterpillars prefer to starve than eat leaves sprayed with this. More cherries
for me then.
I’ve had this book for a while (and if
you’re interested, it’s Organic Fruit Growing
by Annette McFarlene) but it hasn’t been until now that I’ve actually had the
space in my head to think about what I need to do and how I should go about
doing it. Here I read that our lovely
olive trees will also resent a hard pruning and if pruned too fiercely will
refuse to deliver us fruit for a couple of years.
Our figs on the other hand require hard
pruning (phew! We did something right!) as fruit will grow on the younger
branches. They should be pruned by at least half every year to ensure good
fruit growth and as we’ve suspected, require adequate water in the growing
period to ensure that the fruit is plump and juicy.
Rohan’s decided that we need a big
whiteboard for the shed so that we can record all the pruning dates and tips so
that we have a running jobs list for tending the trees throughout the year. It’s
a great plan as it means that we can also record the bugs/ disease we treat and
how we treat them.
So, after a lazy day today, tomorrow is
back to full farm duties for me. The usual mowing and then I’ll get some fertilizer
onto some of the plants, rip out some broccoli that has gone to seed, make up
some molasses spray and get out there and tend my trees. Life on the farm – it’s
a constant learning and I love it!
