early july fruit harvest

This past week, we've harvested some of the first fruits from the yard since we moved in January 2013. Unfortunately, there has been late frosts both this year so we haven't gotten any fruits from our 7 fruit trees. (Ok, there were three pears and I put plastic bags on them to try saving them from the birds and squirrels, but that just dried them out! Maybe I did it too early or the sun is just too intense here in Colorado).

Fortunately, we planted a redcurrant bush last fall, so we got a decent harvest from that (above). I made a redcurrant/rosemary freezer jelly.


Yes, this is a lime that we grew. Our lime tree has had a single lime on it for the past 6 months. I've had it outside in the shade and a squirrel finally decided that it was time to harvest. I found the lime in another planter with a tiny bite out of it. I saved it and ate it with chips and salsa, and with empanadas.
 

I was excited to identify a patch of brambley bushes in a corner of our yard as red nanking cherry. And they happened to have a handful of ripe cherries on it, buried in the middle of the brambles–the birds must've gotten all the more exposed ones. Shown here with a few gooseberries mixed in. Both are pretty tasty!

learning to prune fruit trees

Learning to prune our fruit trees has been interesting. While it is pretty intimidating at first, I now enjoy it. I imagine it is a bit like painting or maybe sculpting. Every cut matters but you're not quite sure how much it matters. Though unlike sculpting, you have to wait a year to get any feedback about whether your choice of cut was a good one. Add to that the fact that I'm still not sure which tree is which, and there was a lot of intimidation.

I checked out five pruning books from the library. After lots of reading, then lots of observation, then more reading, then starting slow, then more reading, I became more confident. Here's my most recent bold move–weighing three overly vertical branches down to become more horizontal:


I wish I had nice before/after photos, but I don't.

Resources:

• The Pruning Book by Lee Reich – Great intro to pruning basics
• Pruning & Training by Christopher Brickell; David Joyce –Very detailed instructions for specific species and forms
• The Smart Gardener's Guide to Growing Fruits by Dr. Bob Gough – A detailed intro to pruning (and more) that is straightforward and instills confidence

Notes:

• For most trees, prune in late winter/early spring when dormant
• Thinning cuts thin
• Heading cuts promote vigorous regrowth
• Wide crouch angles make strong branches
• ~6–10 inches between branch joints
• Angle heading cuts away from bud
• Make heading cuts close but not too close to bud
• Bud(s) below heading cut turn into branches
• Most novices don't prune enough

new (to us) fruit trees

As I mentioned earlier, we inherited five fruit young trees from the previous owner:

• pear (red sensation bartlett)
• peach (diamond princess)
• apricot (patterson)
• cherry (2x bing semi-dwarf)

The tags contain some information: the peach and pear are self-pollinating; the cherries are on semi-dwarf root-stock; but not much else. I'd like to geek out and know allll the details. As you can probably tell from the remainder of this post.

  

We got in on a friends' order with a nursery, so we'll have two bare-root apple starts coming in April:

• Winecrisp on EMLA 7 (semi-dwarf)
• Crimsoncrisp on EMLA 7 (semi-dwarf) 

Interestingly, I learned this about dwarf rootstock from Alexis Ziegler's book:

"Dwarfs may have other problems as well. They are less vigorous, and may become stunted and unproductive if they are stressed early in life. With apples in particular, the wise choice is to simply avoid dwarfs. If you have a very limited space, get a semi-dwarf and prune it when it's dormant. That's basically what commercial orchards do."  

The Crimsoncrisp and Winecrisp should produce about a month apart–check out this cool maturity chart from Adams County Nursery.

The late winter is the ideal time for pruning, so I'm getting ready to do that. Unfortunately, I can't tell any of them apart since they're all dormant and I don't yet know their barks:

I'm looking for books/resources on pruning and tool recommendations. So far, I've looked at Growing Fruit Naturally by Lee Reich. I also might check out his "The Pruning Book."

Funny, I just started listening to The Botany of Desire chapter on apples and had an urge to rewrite this post from the point of view of the apples–evolving to be sweet and tasty enough to entice me into planting them!