Updates

Sunday June 2nd  Blooming in the Orchard this week

Thyme

Iris

Red Yarrow and purple Pincushion flowers

 

 

 

Sunday  December 3rd, 2023 

 Bring part of Avella Orchard into your homes for the holidays!  We have FREE winter greenery (fir, pine, juniper, ivy, and what I affectionately call "eastern oregon holly" (Oregon grape - leaves look almost identical to holly) )  all available for seasonal decorating - on wire shelving on the south side of the parking lot. Please drop by at your convenience and pick some up!

 

Saturday April 15th, 2023

Today we planted 7 trees and fenced in the new pear 'krall' on the north at the foot of the ramp. 

The new trees included the 3 tulip poplars and the Koidu Reinette apple in the Shade 'krall',  two apples on Antonovka rootstock (Grimes Golden and Api Etoile) on the dojo flat, and the first of the four pears slated for the Pear 'krall' (Duchesse du Berry d'Ete).  Of all the fruit trees we plant, the pears take the longest to come into bearing - four to six years.  As pears need to be closer together (than apples) to effectively get pollinated, this new Pear 'krall' will provide good pollination for the nearby Anjou, Comice, Seckel and other pears. 

 

Easter Sunday April 9th, 2023 

 Yesterday we received 4 apple trees from local grafter John Hibbert.  All 4 are on M111 rootstock, so they need to be in protected places.  The Almata crab I planted in the dojo pollinator garden by the irrigation tank - the bright blossoms of this heirloom crab will cheer us up on gray days, and help pollinate the other smaller apple trees on the other side of the tank.  The Api Etoile ("star apple"), a very old Swiss apple, and Wyndham Russet, a fine late dessert apple, we planted in our new Shade Krall.  This new "krall", in the middle of what had been the "asparagus forest",  had been largely mulched over the winter, and then yesterday staked and fenced by David, Conner, and Henry. We expect the other trees that will be planted there - 3 tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipfera) and Koidu Reinette apple - to arrive from Fedco sometime this coming week.  Conner pre-dug the holes for these trees so getting them planted will be much easier (ie possible) for me.  

This new Shade Krall, with the 3 landscape trees and a central "battery" (3x2 hole filled with wood chunks and chips for holding water) and circular swale along the outside edge of the fence, will offer a respite from the summer sun.  With the bushes ordered from High Country Gardens around the entry gate and other flowering plants we hope to provide a nectar-rich respite for pollinators - bees, bumblebees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds in particular love the tulip poplars (actually not poplars, but magnolias) for their nectar abundant flowers, so we are focusing on planting other flowers that are particularly good for those little hummers ... agastache, monarda, and others. 

 

 

 

Sunday August 28th, 2022

The CSA has finally started - I have been very surprised at how delayed fruit ripening has been.  Last week I picked and delivered the first boxes (no charge for these, as they were still a little thin) with Gravenstein and Lodi apples, Shiro and Watermelon plums, and the last of the red currants.  

Right now the focus remains watering - as we head into another week with 100 degree days.  This fall the focus will be mulching as we continue to build up the water-holding capacity of the soil. 

On a positive note, we now have several new inhabitants of the orchard - a pair of Calliope hummingbirds and several small flycatchers (I think they are Dusky Flycatchers).  The pollinator plants and new trees planted this spring are mostly thriving, despite the oppresively hot and dry summer.

On the struggling still front, the paper wasps continue to keep me out of the southwest corner of the orchard, and the 5-6 foot tall grass still dominates the orchard despite help with mowing.  Pathways are passable but far too much in between the paths is a grass jungle.  

 Looking forward to the cooler days of fall!

 

Sunday December 12th, 2021

"in winter, the wise trees sleep ..."

... and winter finally arrived, for real, after a strange late fall where I would put away the hoses one weekend "for the winter" only to drag them out again the next week-end to water the way-too-dry soil; back and forth, tempted to plant out more bulbs and herbs/flowers, knowing I shouldn't and falling for the tempting possibility on days when the sun came out and the temperatures climbed... leaving me now with a few freezing plants in pots and a small handful of unplanted bulbs ... but wth many hopes for what did get in the ground on those warmer days ....

Sunday August 8th, 2021

So much has changed ... 

    I've cancelled the 2021 CSA; this year there just isn't enough fruit, about 20 - 30% of normal.  

    The heat has made it VERY hard to keep up on watering.         

    There are more perennial blooms every year,  from milkweeds to maximilian sunflowers,  anise hyssop (agastache) to  bee balm (monarda), summer savory to winter savory.  Still, there are noticeably fewer bees and butterflies than in previous years, especially fewer honeybees.

    I'll be changing my future emphasis in planting on increasing the amount of shade trees, especially where I can combine that function with additional functions - like red alder for nitrogen fixing, catalpa ("cigar trees") for hummingbird food.  

    I've taken on two challenges for the orchard, EO Wilson's 50% for the wild, and the Ecologic Overshoot chalenge of reducing consumption by 40%.  This spring we dug a "smile" (curving ditch) and a shallow seasonal pond, both now planted with native horsetail and cattails.  Now we will be adding Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), an important food plant for Columbia River tribes, to the smile and the seasonal pond.  I will also be adding sweet flag (Acorus calamus), not native but an important plant in European herbology and history, used for millennia. 

 

Wednesday June 22nd, 2021

 It has been a hectic three months - so much planted, so much changed!  So much still to do ...

Blooming now - our heirloom roses, lavender, catmint , columbine and native penstemons are blooming now, with the daylilies just starting.   

Chickadees have already hatched out their young, filling the trees with birdsong.  New bird sighting: Western Wood Peewee.  Sometimes during the day I can hear osprey calling as they cruise the Grande Ronde river, sometimes in the evening I can hear nighthawks booming.  

Bees and bumblebees that mobbed the black locust when it was blooming, and then the catmint, are finding the clumps of lavender now.  

Orchard chores include WATERING, mowing, thinning, pruning and should already be including bagging the little apples and pears with the "sockies" soaked in Surround, a solution of finely ground kaolin clay that discourages codling moths from laying their eggs on the fruit.   Also a little planting as I can't seem to stop indulging in the purchase of more pollinator plants to go in our "kralls" - the fenced oases with the tanks for drip irrigation (still to be set up). 

There is always more than I can get to on the weekends, but I also try to stop once in a while and just marvel at the swallowtail butterfly drifting along, the first copper and yellow rose on a new planting, the lilac transplants leafing out, the beautiful and amazing and lively abundance that is Avella Orchard. 

 

Sunday March 21st, 2021

New flowers continue to show up ... spring is definitely unfolding.  Last week we planted 9 of the new semidwarf apple trees and the first of the grapes and currants down by the trellis on the north side of the orchard.  I know - I had committed before to planting only standard apple trees ... so why this sudden surge of semidwarfs?  It's a combination of several factors: 

1) not being able to find many of these varieties on standard (Antonovka) rootstock

2) starting to run out of room for standard sized trees but still having lost of corners that semidwarf trees could fill 

3) lacking the grafting skills to get multigrafts going on our "grandmother trees"

4) so many of the small dwarf apples trees are dying off now that they are 50+ years old (very old for a dwarf tree), so the orchard is losing a lot of it's varietal offerings and I very much want to build that "ark" of genetic diversity back up

5) I'm growing older and would like to enjoy the taste of these fruits!  the semidwarf trees should start bearing in 3 to 5 years instead of 5 to 10 years ... 

I will still continue to plant at least one standard (longlived) apple tree each year, but will be looking to the semidwarf trees to provide the grafting material that will make it possible to someday have these wonderful varieties on our Antonovka "grandmother" multi-graft trees

 Sunday March 7th, 2021    A New Year ... 

We are well into a new year, and there is so much to catch up on!

After heavy snows that just kept piling up every time I thought they were starting to melt down, spring has, if reluctantly, arrived. 
The very first flowers are starting to peek through - first the snowdrops that pushed their way up through the still icy leaf cover, and today I saw the very first of the violets (there is a place close to our front door where the clothes dryer exhausts, and the warm-ish air allows a sneak preview of coming flower attractions).  I am very much looking forward to all our flower bulbs coming up - last fall we planted over 400 more bulbs, everything from camas to crocus, hyacinths to hostas, siberian iris to ever more narcissus.  We concentrated on planting up the dojo pollinator garden, under the currants, honeyberry and goumi.  I also put a fair number of bulbs in the front triangle by our mailbox, ridiculously hot and exposed in mid-summer, but perfect for spring blooming bulbs that will die back as the summer marches on, and then hide away until next spring.  

Plant orders - I kind of went overboard this last fall and winter (I blame it on the pandemic - a combination of isolation and desperation).  Soon we will have a LOT of trees, bushes, vines and flowers to get in the ground - 11 semidwarf apples, 1 standard apple, 2 European pears, 2 sugar maples, 2 Kousa dogwoods; 8 currants, 4 jostaberries, 10 Nanking cherries, 2 goumi, 8 roses; 7 grapes, 6 honeysuckle, 2 cinnamon vines, 10 groundnuts;  7 anise hyssop (Agastache) (different cultivars), 2 yucca, 2 asters, 3 maximilian sunflowers, 2 gaillardia, 2 wild bergamot, 1 cardinal flower.  And seeds - mostly annuals for direct seeding on the dirt mounds by the driveway, and favas to grow up inside the fruit tree cages.  

Although all of these deserve their own blog, for now I will close with the overall plan - it's time to shrub up the "fruit forest"!  And, if I am ever to host a honeybee hive, I need to make sure the bees can feast season long on flowers free of neonicotinoids. 

I doubt this planting list is the end of my ordering - already I am thinking of where I would like to try hardy kiwis again ... 

 

 

Thursday September 17th          Heavy Smoke Cancels Fruit Picking This Week

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Wishing everyone health and well-being.

"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well" - Hildegard of Bingen

 

 

Sunday August 2nd, 2020    Harvest Marathon has begun

Last week was the "pre-season" free boxes picked and delivered to CSA clients, with the first  harvesting .... I am scrambling to get trees and bushes with ripe fruit picked while still trying to reserve some of my morning time for watering and "tending", and still fit in breakfast between teaching tai chi, picking, and watering (afternoons are for my "day" job).  Alas, picking more than what I need for the CSA boxes is NOT happening, and the fallen apricots and pluots bear testimony to my time constraints.  It is true that the fallen fruit is being eaten by deer and squirrels and enjoyed by bees, wasps and butterflies.  Still, I can't help but feel guilty.  This week it's already time to put that behind me as more fruit begins to ripen. 

To keep some sanity in my very small and crowded living quarters, I have moved the CSA into our dojo for now (closed for the pandemic - all classes are strictly outside).  I purchased just this last week an old beat up but fully functional refrigerator so I can cool the fruit down after harvesting, and have a place to keep the seconds (discards from the CSA boxes) until I can process them or find another home for them.  The transformed dojo lobby now has a refrigerator, tables for sorting, picking buckets and boxes, CSA boxes and containers, and dryers for fruit and herbs.  Much better than trying to do it in the middle of my living room/kitchen/home office!

Sunday July 12th, 2020  Hope and Berries

Fruit trees are getting more expensive - especially if they are shipped - this spring I gambled on 2 Siberian C peaches - one is doing fabulous, the other is ... well ... still hardly leafing out.  These peaches are extremely hardy and disease resistant, my last great peach hope.  The good news is that Siberian C peaches are not grafted, grown from seed, and as they are self-fruitful tend to come true to type.  If even one Siberian C peach lives and thrives and bears fruit, all those peach pits can be grown up into more Siberian C peaches.

Fortunately not all our trees are purchased - I discovered a little oak tree coming up in the "social circle".  Rather than buy fencing for it, I'm using bamboo I needed to thin out of our stand and grass I needed to cut.  I've not exactly taken the pledge to not buy anything in the next year (Minimum Viable Planet) but I am trying to evaluate all purchases and see if I can come up with a creative alternative.  Although the little oak is not in the ideal place for us, it apparently is in an ideal place for it, so I'm going with that.  Seeing it come up on it's own is very hopeful for me - the orchard is planting itself!


Berries are part of my hope for the future of Avella - and the summer parade of berries has started - goumi (almost past already); raspberries ready to munch (buried in morning glory but still bearing); mulberries - just a taste right now, but promise of more to come; currants, gooseberries, and jostaberries just starting to ripen.

 

Sunday July 5th, 2020   Gratitude for what is

New roses still continue to bloom and the day lilies have joined in.  Birds are abundant in the orchard, and for the first time goldfinches have remained past the spring migration. Every morning now I see a bright male goldfinch getting water at the birdbath in the dojo pollinator garden.  Robins gobble up the ripening goumi berries.  During last week's cloudy and occasionally rainy weather we planted 2 new coral agastaches and a new lavender around the base of the young Japanese walnut in the "social circle", and discovered a baby oak tree coming up on its own on the southeast edge of the "social circle".  

Although all the chores of mowing and weeding and thinning and bagging and pruning continue to outpace our attempts to deal with them, the orchard is full of vibrant life.   

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday June 28th, 2020    "A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet .."

Roses continue to bloom, along with the summer flowers - yarrow, milkweed, daylily, the thymes, and more ... fruits are getting bigger, and the bamboo keep sprouting up in unexpected places.  The rains earlier this month have brought us grass almost as tall as I am, along with the bamboo being as happy as I have ever seen it.  Honeysuckle blooms and russian olive (Eleagnus) sweeten the air. 

All chores - transplanting, pruning, mowing, weeding, bagging fruit - all race ahead of me.  

Still more and more birds nest here every year, and the simple vibrancy of the orchard sings.  Deer rest in the shade of the pines and old apples.  Last evening I heard a night hawk - for whose sake the bite of an occasional mosquito seems such a small inconvenience.

 

 

 

 

Sunday June 8th, 2020     "Soon it's going to rain, I can feel it ..."

  Alternating rain with splashes of sunshine has the bamboo and other grasses putting on monumental growth.  Keeping up with weeding is not humanly possible, but I do my little bit each day.  This week the peonies started to bloom, and some of our heirloom roses such as Cardinal Richlieu. The rugosa shrub rose continues to bloom profusely and delight the bees.  Roses are a wonderful pollinator bridge between the apple trees and the summer flowers.  

Along with other chores, this week I finally got the comfrey planted out by on of the Siberian C peaches, and the red osier dogwood "sticks" stuck deep into muddy ground by the bamboo in the pollinator garden.  That, and a little pruning, mulching and mowing was the orchard for me this last week. 

 

 

  Sunday May 24th, 2020       "Well it's rainin' in the mountains, and the river's on the rise ..."

A week of rain brought rivers and creeks to the top of their banks, and flooded low fields and roads. Sunshine on Saturday gave me an opening for mowing the grass that keeps getting taller and taller and taller ... and a lovely Sunday morning tempted me out first to Ladd Marsh, and then down Philberg Road along the Grande Ronde river to collect nettles and horsetail for the herbal teas I use to combat bacterial problems on the fruit trees this wet wet wet spring.  I also gathered willow cuttings for a willow tea to promote root growth on the new Siberian C peaches, Calville Blanc apple and Beautiful Arcade apple.  I may have been too ambitious, as the rain on Monday encouraged me to stay inside and not get to those chores yet.  Perhaps tomorrow ...  

Already the rowan and elderberry are blooming, the maypop vines are finally leafing out, the mints and bamboo are all jumping for joy.  Along the dojo entrance path, catmints are overgrowing the lavenders I planted in between, and I think it would be wise to remove at least one or more of the catmints and plant them elsewhere.  Both kiwis planted in the middle of the bamboo have leafed out and look happy.  That idea of giving them the shade and protection of the bamboo may have worked! My stinging nettle patch is slowly spreading, and the mugwort cam back as well.  The small comfrey I planted with them is already blooming! I still think I need more pollinator blooms for this "in-between" time post-fruit tree bloosoms and before summer blooms of mint, clovers, and other herbs.  

I have also been starting a list of desired trees, shrubs and flowers for hummingbirds, that I have been seeing perched under the shelter of the garage eaves in the heavy rain. 

  

 

 

Sunday May 17th 2020   Re-wilding, letting go, and trying hard        

Half of May is already gone, I've managed to thin most of the early pears, but already falling behind on getting to the apples and late pears.  Apricots this year are over-bearing, and I am trying to get at least the lower branches thinned. No blooms on Alexander this year, but plenty on the other big trees that will need attention SOON.  

Mowing is hit and miss, between the rainy weather and other chores (oh, and my paying job).  I'm trying to get enough short grass on the parts easily seen from the road to reassure passers-by that we're not becoming a WILD AND ABANDONED place, all the while I am doing my best to have the place become as wild as I can.  Success story - the first camas bloomed this year.  Success story - we now have two elderberry seedlings that came up on their own.  Success story - looks like the milkweed overwintered OK. 

Weeding, mowing, thinning, pruning chores all continue to pile up.  This year there is no orchard crew to help with all those tasks.  I will have to let go of my expectations ... while continuing to do what I can.  It's going to be a strange year, this year of the pandemic and all its related challenges.  Still the native blue flax plants shared by a friend are noticeably bigger, some of the grape cuttings from another friend are leafing out, crickets provide a soothing chorus, and bees mob the dandelions. 

 

Sunday May 3rd 2020    A week of sun and bees, hail and rainbows

All the apples are blooming now.  Even the first quince (the small Pineapple Quince) has blossoms opening.  Most of the daffodils are gone, and only the Pheasant's Eye daffodil is now flowering.  On sunny afternoons bees are out and about. 

Sunny days gave way to cooler days and nights, rain and hail.  And rainbows.

 

Sunday April 26th 2020    "Apple, plum, pear and cherry - all good things to make us merry"

Earlier this last week the apples started blossoming, and several apples are now in full bloom.  Gravenstein, Pink Pearl, James Grieve, Calville Blanc.  Despite the cooler weather, the Oregon Grape blossoms are now mobbed by bees whenever the sun breaks through the clouds. 

The rain at the end of the week was enough to make a difference, and was most welcome.  The rain also provided the perfect opportunity for planting out plugs of chives, from overgrown planters, now joining the sorrel and comfrey planted last week around the base of some of our younger fruit trees and heirloom roses.  I also dug up and transplanted plugs of lemon balm, that had crowded around an irrigation faucet, to a number of locations - around fruit trees, at the foot of the "vine wall" between maypop vines and goji berry vines, and in between the currants, goumi and honeyberry on the south fence of the pollinator garden.  Today we planted out two very young Asian pears - Chin Li and Seuri Li - that had been growing up in gallon pots since getting grafted at the spring 2019 Home Orchard Society Porpagation Fair.  Unfortunately two other grafted trees from that group - Shen Li Asian pear and Lukavanski European pear - died over the winter.  We still have a Berenzki Quince from that group, but may take another year growing it up in a 2 gallon pot before finding it a permanent home.  Taking advantage of the damp soil I also planted out a pot of spearmint (potted up last fall) to the "vine wall", leaving one last place for the Moroccan mint (which hasn't come up yet ... I hope it survived the winter!).  

We have more plants to spread around the orchard this next week, from chives to mints to seedling hazels to oregano to ... My goal this next week is to plant out a few plugs every morning  while the soil is still damp.  We'll see how that goes.

 

 

Sunday April 19th 2020    And the beat goes on

Almond

Hug's Opo Pear

This week the orchard continues blooming, with ornamental pears now in full bloom, European pears (Summer Bloodbirne, Opo, McLaughlin) starting to bloom, Asian x American plum crosses (Toka, Waneta, La Crescent, Purple Heart) all blooming, the early European plums (Burton, Pearl) starting to bloom, the seedling cherries and the big cherry trees all blooming, and the almonds (hardy Ukrainian varieties from One Green World) all blooming now.

The  apricots  are done blooming now, but as the blossoms faded and the petals were drifting down on the breezes, brought another kind of beauty - "blossomfall" - looking like snowfall - so lovely!

Planting goes on - got the honeysuckle I had been waiting for planted out by the other vines on the south side of the pollinator garden, the Calville Blanc apple settled into a spot where a seedling chestnut had died (easier digging!), groundnuts scattered in among the different stands of bamboo, and finally today another 5 raspberries (August Red - fall bearing) planted out in the raspberry beds.  The two Siberian C peaches (we are ever hopeful of finding a tougher but delectable peach) were planted in different locations with very different soil.  A generous gift from a friend - pots of French sorrel, comfrey and horseradish - have all been scattered both in the north and south, at the base of young fruit trees in cages.  I've transplanted two shovelfuls of peppermint to the base of the vine wall, and a wandering daylily has a home now at the base of a Stanley plum planted last year. Busy time in the orchard!

 

 

Sunday April 12th 2020    Dance of the Plum (and Apricot and Peach) Blossoms 

  Last week Avella Orchard began the progression of blooms .... the old apricots (mobbed by California Tortoiseshell butterflies), followed by the big old myrobalan/"cherry" plum (P. cerasifera) that we call the "watermelon" plum, and then a quick progression of plum/apricot crosses: Pluot, Shah-kar-pareh, and Tlor-tsiran; with the Asian plums following close behind: Shiro, Climax, Purple Heart; accompanied by our few surviving peaches: Strawberry Free and Charlotte; and the Montrose apricot we planted.  Every day there are new blooms ... 

Shiro plum

Strawberry Free peach

Charlotte peach

Pluot

California Tortoiseshell butterfly on apricot blossoms

 

   

 

Sunday March 29th 2020    Small Steps Forward 

I am not sure if it is the cold, damp and dismal weather or the general feeling of pandemic containment, but it seems I have not yet been able to take advantage of my increased time at home to get much done in the orchard.  After seeing long lists hang around day after day, I now set myself small reachable goals. Yesterday we unpacked and planted out 4 vines - 2 Crimson Star goji berry (sometimes called wolf berry) and 2 maypop passionflower - on the south fence of what we call the Dojo Pollinator Garden.  I am still waiting for delivery of the honeysuckle I ordered in the winter, which will join the other vines.  The aim is to provide 1) a green wall instead of a metal wire fence (quick, vines, breathe in that carbon!!!), 2) a sequence of vertical blooms for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, and 3) an exploration of unusual fruits for my CSA clients.  At the base of the vines, I will be transplanting a variety of mints - lemon balm, peppermint, spearmint, Moroccan mint - along with planting bulbs.                                                                               

Today's small goal was planting out some dutch iris bulbs in the trench dug last year for the new irrigation pump.  I find my thirst for spring color grows each year.

In the meantime, I notice that the perennial plants are pushing up - daylilies, chives, Egyptian onions, peonies ... Every day there are new changes - something to see and celebrate!  

Wishing everyone the best of health and the opportunity to see the great seasonal greening.

 

Sunday March 22nd 2020    The Gift of Wonder 

It's been a terrifying and uncertain time around the COVID-19 ... we have made the very difficult decision to stand down our skilled, experienced orchard crew, just at the time when there is so much to be done.  What gets done will get done.  It will be an interesting year.

In total disregard of our own worries, spring continues to unfold in all its wonder. Violets, crocus, and daffodils are blooming in an explosion of color.  I watched a pair of goldfinches search for nesting material among the dried stalks of last years lavender blossoms.  Turns out the nesting box I had been watching for two weeks now was claimed by house sparrows who found a way in through the side (which swings open for cleaning) but I don't have the heart to throw them out now that they've built a nest.  I have more boxes I can put up.

I am at home more now, "working from home", but less hours than usual.  There is time to wander the orchard, and notice the gift of spring.  

 

Sunday March 8th  2020    Diving into the season

We've had a cold snap, but sunshine still brought us out into the orchard to begin pruning.  We've started with landscape trees so I can get into pruning shape before tackling the fruit trees.  Pruning up downturned branches intruding into the parking areas helps the trees and the students.

I've already been planting some bulbs and starts ... the giant snowdrops were a gift from a friend thinning out her stand, the Siberian iris were an impulse buy at Bi-Mart.  With help we've got the native river birch planted on the east perimeter fence, the ornamental dogwood moved to the dojo pollinator garden, and an unknown tree (probably ash) that was growing too close to the house planted out on the west perimeter fence where the tamarack died.  

One of the birdhouses we put up last year now seems to be under consideration by the birds.  The old rowan tree that died is now being excavated by an enterprising chickadee taking advantage of the wood softened up by the Botryospheria obtusa infection.  I find myself wondering about the role of this "old orchard disease" in the overall functioning of the orchard as "forest".  Many more questions than answers ...

 

Sunday February 16th  2020    Whispers of Spring

Daylight is starting to linger a little longer.  Winter hibernation is almost over, and it is time to start pruning, mulching, and - unbelievably - weeding.  It is also time to begin scheduling events and planning work days.  

The Home Orchard Society is holding their annual Fruit Propagation Fair on Sunday March 15th, and I am planning on being there with scionwood to share.  

I will be holding our first (hopefully annual!) Plant Sale on Saturday April 11th.  We'll have seedling filberts, bamboo, and herb starts.  Other tablers will have their own offerings for sale, from vegetable starts to permaculture perennials to house plants.  Interested in having your own table and selling your extra plants?  Call or text and we'll talk!!

Part of the Plant Sale will be The Great Glass Give-Away ... we'll have FREE clean used bottles and jars suited for making herb oils and vinegars, pickling, canning, juicing, seed-saving and more.   Let's get our local food system going! 

Friday December 20th 2019     Re- Connecting

Today I had the pleasure of walking out into the orchard with special visitors - Lorraine and Jim Gilbert and their guest Andrey. It is so wonderful to share the orchard with dedicated "plant people", and talk plants plants and more plants!! Jim and Lorraine, after running Northwoods Nursery and One Green World for decades, retired and continued to expand their passion for plants, now running extensive trials of apricot varieties they collected from New Zealand, Korea, Uzbekistan, New Jersey (Purdue University) and other localities. Their guest Andrey is a horticulturist from Vladivostok - one of their very many international contacts and "plant" friends.

It is always both encouraging and humbling to share this unique orchard with such esteemed guests ... encouraging that this diverse collection of trees originally planted by Mr. Ryan and added to by others is valuable and unique enough to be of interest to serious professionals, who can see and understand how valuable it is; and humbling when I think about how many mistakes I have made in the orchard over the years - sins of both commission and omission - also obvious to serious professionals.

The orchard is definitely not at it's best right now on a grey windy winter day - neither adorned with snow (which melted off last night) nor showing much care after the unexpected hard 9 degree freeze the third week of October froze all the fruit left on the trees, still hanging on now and needing to get knocked down. There was so much pruning that didn't happen, grass grew back where it had been mowed, or weeded and mulched. Tall grass had turned to vagrant straw. The orchard looked (how can I describe this?) ... derelict.

Still I can see this year's new growth on the young trees we've planted, how much taller and thicker the bamboo is, listen to the birdsong from the winter denizens that find shelter here. I don't walk through the orchard much in the winter, and re-connecting today with the orchard was a wonderful way to look through the longest night and shortest day to the coming year.

My deep thanks and appreciation to our visitors (who let me talk far too long about Imbler Beauty apples, planting "madrina" trees, goumi and grapes growing up old apricots, failures with hardy kiwis, successes with seaberry, annual tip die-back on mulberries, the hardiness of Indian Red peaches - and so much more) (and who shared stories of Schisandra berry festival in Korea, New Zealand apricot trials, visiting nurseries and agricultural experiment stations all over the globe - and so much more).                              
Also a special shout out to Sandy Roth of Plantworks, who agreed, with no advance notice, over the phone, to allow these distinguished visitors to visit her nursery and give them a tour of the wild currants at her amazing native plant nursery!!! (THANK YOU SO MUCH SANDY)       
     
Tuesday October 8th   2019    Apple Day at the Farmer's Market
 I was delighted to have Avella Orchard be part of Apple Day - supplying apple "seconds" for cider pressing, offering tastings of 10 different varieties of apples from our orchard.  I heard stories about Mr. and Mrs. Ryan (who started the orchard in the mid-1900's) from folks who bought trees from them, shared scionwood with them, and remembered their love of trees and children and teaching.  I connected with old friends and made new connections with people interested in heirloom fruit and diversity and orchards.  Most of all I got to see faces light up when trying the fresh cider (pressed by Sandy Roth and Dick Kenton), or tasting a new apple, or marveling at the difference in weight between the Alexander and Baldwin apples, or thinking about what it meant that White Winter Pearmain apples have been around since before the Norman invasion of England in 1066 ... apples as living history!
All this was possible due to the invitation and support from Market Manager Jessica Bogard and market stalwart Nella Mae.  It also would not have happened without the help of Caden picking apples the day before, and then Caden and Leela picking more apples the day of and delivering them to the cider press! I now have a much better estimate of how many apples need to be picked to provide fresh pressed cider on a Saturday market day!  (100 gallons of apples). I had mistakenly thought 60 gallons of fruit would be sufficient!!  I also learned that I didn't need 10 apples of each variety for tasting (4 would have been more than sufficient).  What I did need was a way to keep apple varieties separated in stackable containers until I needed to cut them up for tasting!  
All in all, a wonderful day. 
Looking forward to Apple Day at the Farmer's Market 2020 :)

Sunday September 15th  2019  Fall-ing behind
I'm in the middle of the CSA season, still trying to keep up on watering while once more regretting not getting to summer pruning, starting to dig up plants for potting up over the winter, wondering if I'll really have time to properly plant more Siberian pea shrub if I order them now for fall planting ... 
Summer disappeared in a rush of thinning, bagging, mowing, watering, and then the big projects - replacing our failed irrigation pump (a 40+ year lifetime is enough for a pump) as well as the rusted well casings and the buried uninsulated electric line to the pump (a big trenching project).  Also for the month the pump was down trying to hand water the orchard with hose from the house.  Pruning up the dead branches on the pine trees bordering our orchard, and shredding those branches into mulch.  Weeding out the cages around the younger plants. Hand cutting the grass along our fencelines and the base of our big trees. Then there was the outbreak of Botryospheria obtusa - and needing to cut back and dispose of a lot of infected limbs on primarily the apple trees. 
We never could have even come close to getting to all these tasks without the help of our orchard crew. 

Wednesday December 26th  2018  And the snow came .....
It's time to lift a cup of kindness yet, for Auld Lang Syne.  A time to think back over the last year, and think ahead to the next year, and the next 100 years.  OK, the next 300 years.  Every time we plant a tree on standard rootstock, I know it will be at least 4 - 5 years before it begins fruiting, and possibly later (definitely later for the pears we are planting). I also know that if I can get these trees up and rooting and branching and thriving, they could provide fruit for 150 - 300 years.  
There is a Chinese saying that a young person plants vegetables, a middle-aged person plants bushes, and an old person plants trees. That has certainly played out in my life.  The older I get, the more important it is to me to hand on to the future an orchard that will fruit and shelter and provide for many that I will never meet.  I am sure Mr. Ryan who first planted this orchard felt the same.  May those who come after us feel the same, and always plant for an abundant future. 


Wednesday November 14th  2018  Season end
Now that our CSA harvest season is over, we are cleaning up and putting away the CSA materials, rolling up and putting away hoses and sprinklers, gathering up buckets and garbage cans.  
It is time now to decide on ordering plants this winter for putting in the ground next spring.  After reading through all the CSA surveys that have been submitted, I will be adding more plums, red currants, pears, and quince as requested.  These customer surveys really carry weight with me!
I will also be experimenting with at least one Ume Plum (actually an apricot) tree ... they blossom ridiculously early, and like our apricots will have years when the frosts are too late and prevent successful fruiting.  Ume plums are usually pickled or salted, and also used for vinegar.  Providing a key ingredient in many Japanese dishes, ume plum trees are equally loved for their brilliantly colored early blooms.  
One of the plum trees I will be ordering this spring is a replacement for our very old and ailing Green Gage plum, which has pretty much stopped fruiting.  This plum was our "box filler" the first two years of the CSA, with their sugary sweet dessert-quality fruit.  It's been four years now since we have had a significant harvest from this tree, and I really miss the fruit!
As always, there are some new apples I've met that I've fallen in love with and really want to be part of our orchard.  I am very much hoping to get scionwood for two apples - a local Red Astrachan grown in our valley for at least three generations (OH so fragrant!! yes, biennial, but what a compelling early apple!), and a very late juicy apple from Lostine that has the most citrusy effervescent flavor, small but so outstanding.  I am also planning on bringing scionwood from Rachel-by-the-river (seedling tree by the Grande Ronde River, a long-season mid-sized sugary and crisp yellow apple), Oakhaven (seedling apple from our own orchard voted the best tasting by the Oakhaven preschool students), and Imbler Beauty (important commercial apple historically in this valley, deep vivid red with sweet rich taste and crisp texture, still extant in our orchard) to the Home Orchard Society's early spring Propagation Fair, to share and also to get a few grafted on Antonovka (standard) rootstock.  These "bench grafts" will need to be grown up for a year in pots before they will be big enough to be planted out, and probably 5 to 6 years (or longer) before they start bearing fruit, but oh what wonderful fruit when they do start to bear!

 
Sunday June 17th  2018  Dip and Bag
I am thrilled to announce that this week-end with help from the intrepid orchard helpers we bagged 1,008 apples (7 boxes of 144 bags) ... YEAH!
Of course, that's about 1/3 of what we need to do ... and 1/5 of what I would like to get done ... 
This year we are trying something different: dipping the baggies in Surround (a finely ground kaolin clay product) and then wrapping the apple with the wet baggie (and tying it at the top so the coddling moths don't just crawl down the stem!) ... 

This strategy appears to work so much better than:
 - drying the dipped baggies and then trying to apply them when dry (and flaky), 
 - spraying the tree and then applying the baggies (also too much kaolin dust in the eyes as well as well as white trees everywhere), 
 - bagging the apples and then spraying the trees ... 

I've developed for myself a list of helpful hints on working with Surround and the baggies ... 

• wear clothes that can get stained
• wear long sleeves and long pants (no shorts) even if it is hot
• put on hand lotion before the event
• tie hair back and wear hat or bandana 
• wash up with the outside hose first before going inside
• wash up again inside
• rinse clothes in the shower before throwing in the washing machine
•  put on hand lotion again

Monday June 11th  2018  Time is Flying ...
Somehow losing a week this time of year feels like losing a month ... one week away and the grass has jumped up to waist high in many places, the little tiny fruitlets-to-be are now golf-ball sized, and I'm still ... yes still ... planting ... peonies, iris, catmint, lavender ... 
Mostly what I'm trying to catch up on now is thinning, and weeding, and waiting for the rain to stop so I can mow ... and already it's time to be bagging fruit with the sockies to protect against coddling moth. And did I mention we still don't have the hoses laid out for irrigating?
This part of the year the "shoulds" way outnumber the "cans".

Friday May 11th  2018  Lessons Learned
I'm one of those people who can't drive by a small town plant sale (especially with the sign "Today Only") without stopping. Lessons learned:
1) always carry some spare cash in a "plant sale only" pocket in your wallet
2) have a list in your mind of what you are looking for, and even more importantly, where it will go
3) figure out how much you are (potentially) going to spend before getting out of the car, and then only carry that much cash when you step out of the car
4) don't spend more than 10 minutes at the sale 
5) don't buy a plant unless you know where you will plant it
6) ask them if they want their containers back :)  (and if they want even more containers)
7) if at all possible, plant out the new acquisitions as soon as you get home; if you can't do that, make sure they get planted that same day
8) congratulate yourself for supporting the local economy and most likely saving yourself $$!!

So ... today's additions ... all great pollinator plants ... cat mint, lemon balm, yellow yarrow, fall asters

Thursday May 10th  2018  A Rose By Any Other Name
Last evening we planted out 6 heirloom roses from High Country Roses in Colorado... who doesn't graft their roses but grows them from cuttings, resulting in hardier roses that can die back under extremely harsh conditions and sprout from the roots.  We are trying a new strategy, planting them at the base of compost bins where they will get a steady supply of nutrients and better moisture retention.  We selected roses that will grow into cold-hardy large shrubs with formidable thorns (thinking ahead to deer browsing).  The varieties we planted: Paul Ricault, William Lobb, Fairmount Red, Banshee, JoAn's Pink Perpetual, Blush Damask.

Wednesday May 9th  2018  More plantings
There is always that last spring plant sale that I cannot resist - and so we added 2 European plums (Cambridge Gage, and another Purple Gage), a Titan (cold hardy) almond, and 6 blueberries (3 Aurora, and 3 Liberty - both bearing fruit in late August and into September).  Thanks to Conner for his help on a cold and rainy afternoon!
Now I have to resist making one last order ...
Biggest chore right now is mowing, but thinning is starting soon as the apple blossoms are already dropping - when the wind blows it looks like it's snowing :)
Quince are already blooming, daffodils and narcissus are over, and I'm waiting for the next flowers to bloom. 

Thursday April 26th  2018  Bloom Update
All the pears are now in full bloom, most of the European plums are in full bloom, the apple flower buds are all tipped pink, and the first apple is in bloom - Pristine.  Our big cherry trees are almost past bloom now, along with the AsianxAmerican plum crosses.  
The grass is also growing strong, and today I started mowing with our wonderful electric mower.   Grass clippings are now mulching our newly planted trees and shrubs :) 
 

Sunday April 22nd  2018   Another Day of Planting  
 Saturday we planted and mulched another round of fruit ... 1 European pear (Araganche), 1 Asian plum (Shiro), 3 European plums (Prune d'Ente, Purple Gage, Opal), 1 peach (Black Boy), and 1 quince (Limon).  Also we planted 3 jostaberries, a cross between black currant and gooseberry. Many thanks to Conner and Leela for their assistance, and Caden for digging the holes a month ago! Now I am working on getting cages made for all of them.
In the orchard, the first pears are blooming ... first McLaughlin, then Summer Bloodbirne.  The other pears, especially Opo pear, are close to blooming too.  The first of the apples are showing pink on the flower buds ...  and birdsong is everywhere!

Thursday April 19th 2018   Welcoming Returns and New Arrivals
This spring, with the uneven and uncertain weather, I wasn't sure we'd see much in the way of early blooms.  The apricots did bloom, but sparsely. The myrobalan plums on the south side though burst into heavy bloom, joined with the pluot and the Shiro plum on the north.  Abundant pear flower buds are showing pink tips, and the two ornamental pears around the house and driveway are already blooming.  Daffodils, crocus, grape hyacinth and dandelions are blooming as well.  Seeing all these return blooms is absolutely joyful!
New additions to the orchard planted these last two weeks include 4 Asian x American plum crosses (Pembina, South Dakota, Purple Heart, Toka), 3 apples (Arabskoe, Maiden's Blush, and Roxbury Russet), 5 black locusts, 10 siberian pea shrubs, 10 honey locusts, and 2 heartnuts (Japanese walnuts).  The heartnuts are doubling as future shade trees for the east end of the parking area and the west end of the dojo.
Many thanks to Caden, Brendan, Conner and Leela for helping to make the planting happen!


Sunday December 31st   Looking towards the New Year
This year I decided to plan out the orchard year in advance, knowing that dates for events and the CSA might need to be modified as the year unrolls. So, here is schedule (for more detail, see the Events page):
January 21st  Sunday 2-4 pm       Was Hael ("Wishing Health")
February 4th  Sunday 2-4 pm      St. Brigid's Day 

March 11th    Sunday 2-4 pm      Prep for new tree arrivals
April  1st       Sunday 2-4 pm      Plant new tree arrivals 
April 29th      Sunday 2-4 pm      Blossom Walk & MayDay play
August 12th                                    Start 12 week CSA season
September 9th Sunday 2-4 pm     Orchard tour & fruit tasting
October 7th     Sunday 2-4 pm     Orchard tour & fruit tasting
November 4th                               End 12 week CSA season


Sunday September 24th   Avella out in the community

Yesterday we took a sample of what was ripe in the orchard now to the Farmer's Market Children's
Day and had a fruit tasting as part of the Welcoming Communities booth supporting our town welcoming ALL.
It was fun to share all the different flavors, from Cinnamon Spice, Alexander, Tolman Sweet, and Kandil Sinap apples to Green Gage, Valor, McCoy and Brooks plums, along with some of the history about these fruits.  So few people know about the huge variety of apples, pears and plums that can grow in our area :)
Even though I am slammed right now with harvest, it seemed important - to get the next generation expecting fruit to be interesting and delicious and varied, and to get the next generation interested in diversity, equity and inclusion.   

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The orchard will be hosting the Greater Hells Canyon Council summer potluck for members and friends of GHCC  on Thursday August 24th ... looking forward to great conversation, delicious food, and live Irish music under the stars :)
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We will be hosting a Peace Vigil to stand with Charlottesville,  Thursday August 17th, at 7:00 pm.  We stand against hate and violence, and for inclusion, respect, and connection.  This will be outside in our orchard at 2807 N. Fir Street, La Grande.           - Danae
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Sunday July 30th   Harvest marathon starts soon

June and July disappeared in a rush of thinning fruit, bagging apples and pears, summer pruning, mulching, watering and mowing.  It looks to be a very good pear year!  This is the "off" year for the biggest apple trees although we still will have plenty of varieties from the semi-dwarf trees.  Plums are present but not jumping for joy this year.
The CSA officially starts next week (August 6th) but I am planning on picking some apricots and early plums this week.   

Saturday May 28th   The Disappearing Month

Blooming is over except for the quince.  We've been thinning pears for a month, and thinning apples for two weeks.  Today we started irrigating the north side where it dries out first.
Somehow between being ill for several weeks and other ongoing commitments, April and May just rushed on by.  Daffodils are done, and iris are now blooming.  The green bamboo has been sending up a plethora of new shoots, and I've been trimming out last year's old shoots for garden stakes.  Even the Incense bamboo has now set up new shoots.  Aronia, mountain ash and holly are now starting to bloom, keeping the bees busy.  In two weeks it will be time to start spraying Surround (kaolin clay) to discourage coddling moth from laying their eggs on the tiny apple and pear fruits-to-be.
Letters have now gone out for this year's CSA, which I expect to run August through October.
We're off and running!!!

 

Wednesday March 1st   Birdsong and Buds

I am listening this morning to the spring song of birds, and watching the slow swelling of leaf and fruit buds on the trees.  Despite all the new snow I can see on Mt. Emily, our new trees I ordered last fall will be arriving before the end of this month.  It is time to dig holes, gather mulch, and put together wire cages that will shield our new treelets from the still-hungry deer.  Also it's almost past time to gather the scionwood cuttings that I will take to the Home Orchard Society  "Fruit Propagation Fair"   on Sunday March 19th (a must-go event if you can!!!).  Time also for me to bundle up and wade through the remainder snow to start spring pruning on apples and pears.  Although I still feel like hibernating, and the gray clouds and windchill and patches of snow reinforce that feeling, I now need to shake off my winter lethargy and step out into the orchard. Wish me luck!

Sunday February 5th 2017   An Orchard of Immigrants

It has been hard for me to know what to write.  I decided to share a little about the trees in this orchard.  Here at Avella Orchard, and any orchard in the United States, the fruit trees we grow are immigrants, arriving here from other countries, much like my grandparents, who came to this country as refugees fleeing war and violence.  Apple, pear, plum, cherry ("all good things that make us merry"), peach, nectarine, apricot, orange, fig, persimmon, lemon, quince ... all came here from other places.  Many of our most luscious fruits come from the middle east. Even the botanical name for Peach is "Prunus persica". 

I am reading a book on pears now and was surprised to learn that the pears we think of as European actually developed from crosses of wild pears in Syria, Iraq and especially northern Iran.  The Syrian wild pear is especially valuable because it is remarkably drought hardy, which would be a wonderful attribute to bring to modern pears.  How shortsighted of any country to ban immigrants and refugees. I side with the trees, and celebrate trees of many nationalities in our orchard.

 

Thursday January 19th 2017   Hopeful and Worried  

Chinese clumping bamboo grazed back to the stems

Weather has been hitting extremes of extended cold, repeated snow interrupted with freezing rain and sleet, drifts and a lot of very hungry deer and birds.  Deer are licking the bird seed out of the birdfeeders and munching down on plants they usually don't eat - bamboo and holly.  This is the very first winter I have seen the holly leaves and bamboo leaves grazed. Just for the record, there was a hierarchy of edibility on different kinds of bamboo.  The first bamboo grazed was the Incense bamboo, then the clumping chinese bamboo, and now after both of those grazed to the woody stem, the green bamboo has started to be nibbled. In theory this grazing on the bamboo might actually help the culms not get depleted from transpiration through the leaves. We'll see!

 

 

Sunday January 15th 2017   Thinking About Dirt  

In the depths of winter I catch up on my orchard reading and reflecting and planning. This record cold winter has driven me inside and reading ... one of the books I am devouring is Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R. Montgomery.  I consider this book a "must-read" for anyone interested in land use, history, farming, food systems or public policy.  Very readable, impeccably researched, well organized, and replete with drawings, photos and maps along with footnotes and a great bibliography and index, this book is definitely a good read.  While depressing in its ruthless chronicling of land degradation over centuries, it also documents what cultural and agricultural practices have led to real soil conservation and sustainable agriculture.  

It is really quite simple - don't cut down the trees, don't graze off all the reprod, don't leave dirt bare to wind and rain, don't poison the soil and water.  Remember soil is a living thing, and cherish it.  Give back, don't just take.  Work with nature, not against it. Think long term.

We were incredibly fortunate to have Mr. Ryan and those who came after him follow these conservation tenets, bequeathing to us and those after us a heritage of living soil. We are also working from those tenets, with a 100-year plan to keep adding to the soil, and improving the tilth and health of "the thin layer of weathered rock, dead plants and animals, fungi and microorganisms blanketing the planet" that feeds us all.

"Life makes soil. Soil makes more life."  Sounds so simple, doesn't it?  We just need to not break that cycle, and to joyfully participate in it.  So, Mr. Montgomery, thank you for a worthy winter read!   

 

Tuesday November 29th 2016  Planting for a Possible Future   

Saturday we gave thanks to the wonders of this orchard and this world by planting out two of our three-year-old Antonovka rootstocks that will be grafted in the future to two of our amazing trees here ... the Imbler Beauty apple, a beautiful crimson red apple with great flavor, once a major apple tree here in Union County, yet now we may have one of the only ones left standing  ... and the outstanding Oakhaven apple, planted as a seedling many years ago by the previous owners, a large conical green-golden-orange-red apple voted to have the best flavor of all our apples by the students of Oakhaven pre-school.  Both of these apples are worth carrying forward to a future long past our brief lives, as on the sturdy, tough and deep rooted Antonovka rootstock they can expect to live and bear fruit for 200 or more years, surviving cold snaps and heat waves and drought and downpours.  Old becoming new, kokaishin, one of the oldest rootstocks (from central Asia/Russia, the ancestral home of the apple) grafted to two of our most recent apples unique to this area. 

In this time of uncertainty we continue to believe that a fruitful future is possible by the work of our hands, our attention, and our care. 

 

Sunday November 13th   Dreaming of Spring

Well, the hoses and sprinklers are gathered up and put away, the CSA boxes and cups washed and stored in the basement, last rounds of fruit drying and freezing underway.  Kelp and ground oyster shell have been (loosely) dusted underneath the tree driplines.  Clover and vetch seed have been scattered around all bare dirt openings, along with wildflower seeds gathered from the wild and garden flower seeds given to us by friends.     It's time now to order for spring tree planting ...   The surveys went out to CSA subscribers and friends of the orchard for voting on which trees to become part of the orchard next spring, and there were many fine trees to choose from.  I've compiled the votes that have come in over the last three weeks, and this week-end turned the votes into orders.  From the amazing folks at Fedco we'll be getting  3 apples (Canadian Strawberry, Charette and Pomme d'Or), 2 AsianxAmerican plums (Purple Heart and South Dakota), 1 peach (Lars Anderson) and 1 pear (McLaughlin).   From Trees of Antiquity we'll be getting that second Polly White peach.  From Burnt Ridge Nursery we've ordered the Yellow Egg plum as well as another Montrose apricot, honey locusts, Siberian pea shrubs, and 5 chestnuts (a mix of Chinese, Japanese and European seedlings).  From Oregon's own One Green World we've ordered 2 Montmorency cherries.  We still have one more nursery to order from (Raintree Nursery) and then all the orders will be in for next spring's planting.  Now it will be time to mulch the places where the trees will go in next year, and if the ground doesn't freeze, maybe even get some of the holes pre-dug (in my dreams!).

 

Monday September 19th    Visitors

We were thrilled to have two "fruit detectives" from the Home Orchard Society (www.homeorchardsociety.org), Joanie Cooper and Shaun Shepherd, touring Avella Orchard this morning.  I was able to share our unusual, rare, and local trees, and learned about some of our "mystery" mis-labeled or un-labeled trees. We now know that we have a Tolman Sweet!!!  And a Summer Rambo!!!  I'll be updating our tree lists with this and other new information ...
If you can, make it to the Home Orchard Society's All About Fruit Show, October 15th and 16th, on the westside.  It's an amazing way to see and taste hundreds of different kinds of fruit!!  

 

Sunday August 21st   Why I need to plant more lavender around the orchard

 

Sunday July 24th   Weed or Pollinator Buffet?

This orchard is still teaching me ... this morning my assumptions were challenged as I watched a swallowtail butterfly and numerous bees feasting on the one bull thistle I let grow and bloom ...  as I struggle to understand more about what actually supports diverse and abundant life here, I find much of what I thought I knew confronted by what I am observing on a daily basis ...  

 

 

 

 

Tuesday June 14th   Orchard as Forest: the Overstory

As we continue to re-think and re-plant the orchard as a fruit and nut "forest" new insights find their way onto the ground.  This last planting season we have started putting new trees in "neighborhoods" rather than rows.  The clusters of similar trees should increase the likelihood of cross-pollination and fruit set, encourage each other connecting roots, and create mulched and watered "islands" where other flowers and herbs can thrive.  As part of this we are planting a honey locust to grow up in the middle of each cluster to provide soil nitrogen, in-place mulch, pollinator habitat, and an overstory tree that can shelter the trees under it from extremes of heat and cold and wind and rain. This future overstory of widely spaced honey locust is part of our Climate Change Response as weather events become more extreme.  

 

Saturday June 4th   Pollinator friendly

Honorine des Brabant

honeybee on rosa rugosa

Along with only using non-toxic controls in the orchard, we are supporting pollinators by steadily increasing the flowering shrub and forb layers. We are planting native and fruiting shrubs, including heirloom roses.  This year we added 6 new heirloom roses from High Country Roses  including one that is already blooming this year, Honorine des Brabant.  They join our other 8 heirloom roses, our sturdy Rosa rugosa (much loved by bees) and our pioneer yellow shrub rose.  As the roses bloom after the fruit trees are done blooming, they form an important next step in providing pollinators with a season-long feast.

 

 

 

Friday June 3rd   Codling moth control

We are focusing on codling moth damage prevention now, doing the first round of spraying with Surround (a finely ground kaolin clay product) that works as a barrier to the codling moth, discouraging them from laying their eggs on the growing apple and pear fruits.  We follow this up with using "sockies" (small nylon bags) that are slipped over the immature fruit to also discourage codling moth from laying eggs on the fruit.  Thinning and pruning also helps discourage codling moth.  None of these are always 100%  effective alone or even together, and we will still have 20 - 50% of the fruit damaged by codling moths depending on the variety of the tree.  What is important is that all of these controls are non-toxic; we have made a commitment to not use any kind of poison, as part of our commitment to foster pollinators, birds and soil life.  

 

Wednesday June 1st   Farewell to Oakhaven for the summer

We were fortunate in being able to host Oakhaven preschool again this spring for 6 weeks.  It was wonderful to see the children running through the orchard, scrambling up into our designated climbing trees, exploring, laughing, playing ...  

Monday May 30th 2016   Enroll now for 2016 CSA season!

Hard to believe, but it's already time to enroll for the 2016 harvest! With everything blooming so early this year, I am expecting to have apples the last week of July.  Most of our biennial apples are bearing this year so it will be a big apple year!

 

 Wednesday November 18th 2015  End of season   

The CSA season ended October 31st. No longer spending every spare orchard minute harvesting fruit, I am now getting ready to send out the end-of-season surveys.  

Now is the time outside for fall planting (so far this month, with help from Maddi and Sydney, we've added 4 lodgepole pines, 10 seedling chestnut trees and 8 honey locusts to the orchard) and mulching (starting to clean out the grass around some of the younger trees and re-establish the newspaper-cardboard-woodchip layered mulch).  

Now is the time inside for researching trees and bushes for spring planting, reviewing, researching, dreaming and planning for future harvests.  There's the absolute delight of reading about a new offering (such as the white-skinned white-fleshed apricot Shaa Kar Pehr), the agony of cutting down my wishlists to a more reasonable limit (narrowing down 8 possible apples to 2 ... Gray Pearmain and Grimes Golden ... letting go of apples that are shy bearers or disease susceptible or biennial), taking advantage of newly available fruit trees that I've been thinking of for years (such as the taste test winning heirloom pear Beurre Superfin) ... 

Now is also the time I go back and map out when different fruits ripened and were harvested ... adding it to the time-mapping of previous years.  

Still so much to be done! 

 

Friday May 8th 2015  Ups and Downs   

Downs - my laptop which gave great service for over a decade died unexpectedly in April, and I've been scrambling since then to get the files saved off the old hard drive, get a new laptop, and get everything up and running on the new laptop.  Finally done and blogging again!

Ups - we're already thinning and it looks like a really good year for pears (if we can keep the codling moths at bay!).  The apples also look to have a good fruit set as we begin thinning those as well. Thinning helps reduce bienial bearing (if we get it done in the first month), increase fruit size, increase fruit sweetness, reduce insect and fungal/bacterial damage, hasten ripening, and strengthen the tree.  Big chore - never completely done - but every bit helps.

Downs - we had to start irrigating in mid-April.  It's going to be a long summer.

Ups - several of the grapes and quince we started from cuttings we brought back from the Fruit Propagation Fair are leafing out!!!  I'm looking forward to adding grapes to our orchard very much, although it will be 3 - 4 years before these babies are ready to go!

Downs - none of the apples we grafted from the cuttings we brought back from the Fruit Propagation Fair have made it, and only one of the apples we grafted at the grafting workshop made it. The rootstocks on all the others are still alive, so we will grow them up for a year and try some bud grafts this summer.  I'm still really hopeful that I can continue to learn about grafting and have a better success rate next year!

Ups - more birds than ever in the orchard, so we must be doing something right! 

 

Wednesday March 25th 2015  Busy over Spring Break     

   Attended the Fruit Propagation Fair put on by the great folks at the Home Orchard Society this last week-end, so Monday was grafting 15 apple trees and potting up cuttings of kiwi, quince and grapes.      

Tuesday was planting out the deliveries from Trees of Antiquity (peach - Polly White) and One Green World (quinces - Smyrna, Orange, and Kuganskaya; plum - Early Laxton, plus putting in a hedge of goumi, honeyberry and currants on the south side of the dojo pollinator garden).         

 

Sunday March 1st, 2015   Spring

Buds are swelling on the apricots - the first daffodils and dwarf iris are blooming - honeybees are on the violets - and Oakhaven students will be visiting the orchard again one day a week (Thursdays) starting this week.  It's definitely spring!!  I'm once again daunted by the amount of pruning and mulching to do, and have added on a new task after attending a grafting workshop in Portland put on this last week-end by the Home Orchard Society - starting on my long-term goals of grafting all our aging dwarf apple trees on to "mother trees" that will serve as a "scionwood bank" so we can keep the varieties going.  It's going to take a LOT of practice before I'm comfortable with whip-and-toungue grafting cuts, so I need to start practicing now :)

 Saturday February 14th, 2015   Lovin' the Orchard

Somehow I always view holidays now in terms of the orchard - and St. Valentine's Day is no exception. Chocolates and roses and paper hearts have translated into wood chips, planting bulbs, and cardboard mulch.  I'll be celebrating today by marking out holes still to dig for trees that will be arriving next month, laying down cardboard and wood chips where I plan to put in some shrubs, and transplanting some more flower starts out into the north side of the orchard.   
One of the pleasures of this time of year is going over and over and over all the plant and seed catalogs that have arrived in my mail box, letting my imagination populate the orchard with what could, might, shall be ... flowers, herbs, shrubs out among the new trees now grown into place among the orchard as it is now.  In my imaginings I can see scarlet runner beans running up the wire cages around new trees, daylilies and iris blooming around the drip circles of trees, and in the dojo pollinator garden a mixed row of honeyberries and goumi and currants along the south somewhat shady side.  
Every year one of the treats of the orchard is trying something new - and this year I'm going for honeyberries and goumi.  The honeyberry is actually a bush honeysuckle, with blossoms the pollinators will love and with blue berries that come in early. One of the advantages of honeyberry is that they are reputed to bloom and bear fruits in partial shade.  The 5 varieties I'd like to plant are "late-blooming" which I'm hoping will translate into not getting caught by the harsh freezes that can unexpectedly crunch down in April or even early May.  In among the honeyberry I'm planning on planting 2 varieties of nitrogen-fixing goumi, a bushy relative of Russian olive, also reputedly a great pollinator plant that should bloom after the fruit trees are done, providing bees with an abundant source of nectar at a key transition time, while feeding the soil in the pollinator garden as well as feeding the trees on the other side of the fence.  
I'm on a long term project of planting out nitrogen rich shrubs and trees and forbs in the orchard, providing ongoing nutrients through the soil and also growing up my own future nitrogen-rich wood chip mulch ,,. sort of like chocolate for the trees!

 Sunday February 1st, 2015   Spring Too Soon?

I'm grateful for the beautiful weather yesterday for our celebration of St. Agnes' Day, but also more than a little worried about it.  It's way too soon for buds to be swelling and daffodils to start pushing up the tips of green shoots.  Looking up on the surrounding hills, the snow is almost completely melted off. There are red-wing blackbirds and swans out at Ladd Marsh already. It doesn't look (or sound) at all like January.  And so I worry ... probably the ground state of being for orchardists.  
The up side is that we've been able to transplant some iris, daylilies, sedum, and catmint to the dojo pollinator garden rescued from a soon-to-be-bulldozed site across town.  These plants will add a lot of colorful blooms and pollen for the native bees and honeybees. 
The potential down sides are the trees budding out too early and getting caught by a late hard frost, and a terrifyingly droughty summer.  
Orcharding in a time of climate disruption is going to be a nail-biting adventure.  I am doing my best to spread out the risk by planting a variety of cultivars, experimenting with new crops, starting to fill in a shrub layer, planning for a light overstory of honey locust over the dwarf apple trees, filling in the gaps in our hedgerows, and improving the soil with as much mulch as I can haul and distribute.  
In the meantime, I will do my best to enjoy every day I am in the orchard, whatever the weather.  And start pruning now. 

Monday January 12th, 2015   Winter/Spring Events

I've been sitting down with my calendar trying to figure out orchard events ... so far I've relegated mid-January's Was Hael to a more quiet and less public event and focusing instead on St. Agnes Day - traditionally the first day in February (also known as Ground Hog's Day).  This is the time that the orchard traditionally begins to awaken - a time for fertilizing with the winter's wood ashes tossed into the tree branches and drifting down in the tree's drip circle.  I'm adding kelp meal tossing, bringing some of those needed oceanic trace minerals  that used to be supplied by salmon to our clay basalt and river silt/gravel soils.  If the weather cooperates and the mulch and manure piles aren't frozen, I'll also be adding on some mulching and fertilizing with horse manure for the more athletic attendees. 
For ease of scheduling, we'll be celebrating St. Agnes Day on Saturday January 31st from 10 am to 11:30 am.  Wear warm layers, boots, gloves, and either sunglasses or goggles (the wind can blow the ashes or kelp meal back at you). There will be hot apple cider and a taste testing of some of last year's apple and quince butters.  Please RSVP if you'd like to come!  And, if you have wood ash to share, please let me know!!!!

Sunday December 14th, 2014   Planning for Planting 2015

It is time now to gather in all the information from the CSA survey, my own research, and wanderings in the orchard ... what to plant where in 2015 ... the CSA surveys were pretty consistent in wanting more plums - early and late - European and Asian.  Pears and peaches were next on the frequency list.  
Starting with the survey results, I next go through reference books, nursery catalogs, and online searches.  
So far my top picks for the planting list for next spring are two late plums (Parfumee de Septembre and Coe's Golden Drop) one early Asian plum (Early Golden) and one early European plum (Early Laxton), two late peaches (Indian Free and Polly White), and a late pear (Baron LeRoy).   I have the future planting sites selected, and five of the holes are dug thanks to a wonderful orchard helper.  We've even mulched 2 of the planting holes to keep grass down and prepare the site.  My pledge to the trees is not to order them until I know where they will be going and get the sites initially prepped.  Very ambitious of me!!! but it seems like a mild-ish winter now where I can continue to mulch through the winter months (last year at this time the mulch and manure piles were frozen solid). 
Depending on finances, the next tier of planting trees would be Gray Pearmain apple, Early Transparent Gage plum, Gras Romanesc mirabelle plum, and Reine de Mirabelle plum. Other next tier possibilities include Kansas Sweet Cherry, Chojuro Asian pear, Atago Asian pear, and Yoinashi Asian pear.   I also intend to add some more quince in our hard-to-survive spots on the "Dojo flat", holding down the ends of the bamboo hedges and providing future beautiful late May blooms for us and the pollinators.
There is so much else I would like to plant - "madrina" (step-mother) trees like honey locust to protect the smaller fruit trees, a mixed row of currants, honeyberry and goumi on the semi-shady south side of the pollinator garden inside the fence, a row of blueberries to the west edge of the pollinator garden, more flowers and herbs in the pollinator garden!, more shrubs everywhere tucked into sunny and semi-shady corners, vines on the fences, ... (sigh) but I will have to sort and prioritize time and means.  Spring will be busy!

 Monday December 1st, 2014   "There is no waste in Nature"

I had been heartbroken about losing all my November apples still on the trees when the hard freeze came in early November.  Several trees were still rich with fruit that I had counted on for drying and freezing.  I felt that I had somehow let the orchard down.  
This morning I was out in the orchard taking kitchen compost to the bin, and was surprised by how much birdsong and fluttering there was in the old trees still with frozen, brown, sagging, unusable fruit.  Finches, sparrows, chickadees, nuthatches and a woodpecker were not only searching the bark for food, but were pecking at the fruit still on the branches.  What had been a disaster for me was a feast for them. Lesson learned.

 Sunday November 16th, 2014   The Big Freeze

The snow came first, luckily for the orchard, protecting the ground as a killer freeze came down hard and fast from Alaska, with no time for the trees to harden off. I expect to see this next spring some damage to the ends of branches on many of our trees, and I'm concerned about the newer trees planted this spring.   
I harvested some quince on Thursday, but they were already frozen on the tree, and melted into quince mush when I brought them inside.  I still managed to cook up a pot full of quince jam? butter? for the freezer, tasty and tart for sauces, toppings, and just spreading on a peanut butter sandwich.  I also experimented with a recipe I found online: simmering the skins and cores, straining, cooking down further with cinnamon, cloves and allspice and then thickening with (OG) sugar for quince syrup.  So far I've used the quince syrup as a base for a quick hot drink - a little bit in the bottom of the cup, just add boiling water.  Yum!

 Sunday November 2nd, 2014   End of harvest season

I can't quite believe the 2014 CSA harvest is now over ... it's time now to gather up the CSA boxes/cups/bowls and get them stored for next year, to eagerly go over the end-of-season survey returns, and to begin dreaming and planning about next spring's planting. It is also time for a last pick of apples, a last chance to get some drying or freezing or apple butter done.  Because there are still some apples left on the trees I'm offering CSA families a last bonus end-of-the-season half-box; just let me know!
This season went much better than I expected - with more apples than I thought possible!  Plums were in short supply this year with 4 of my major plum trees not bearing any (or VERY little) fruit.  Early or "summer" pears (Bartlett, Clapp's Favorite, Butter, Packer) were very hard hit by coddling moth, but the later "winter" or keeper pears (Comice and Anjou) did much better. The filbert harvest was much better this year, and we had our very first chestnut harvest - a real reason to celebrate!!  Walnuts took a hard hit in the spring frosts and had very few nuts, and all of those few were affected by husk fly.  Because they are so frost tender in the spring, walnuts will always be a hit or miss.  
Next year's harvest will be different again - never the same year to year!  It's always an adventure, and one that I look forward to from now until next August when the harvest begins again :) 
 

Sunday October 19th, 2014 The Home Orchard Society "All about Fruit Show"

We're back from the "All About Fruit Show" in Canby, an annual event sponsored by the Home Orchard Society.  We were able to taste test a lot of apples and pears and grapes we are considering planting in the future, see different quince fruits we would like to include in the orchard, and find out what hardy kiwis, pawpaws, honeyberry, seaberry, jujube, and autumn olive are like as juices, sorbets, and fresh eating (thanks to One Green World).  I also get to compare our apples against the samples there when I am questioning the accuracy of a label on our fruit tree (the tree in our orchard labelled as Orleans Reinette is SO not that!). There is also always the discovery of some new fruit varieties that will now go on my wish list after taste testing ... Winter Orange apple, Calville Rouge apple, Collette pear, Seuri Li Asian pear, Vanessa grape, Niagra grape ...  

 

Tuesday August 26th, 2014 "Build it and they will come"

A bit of pollinator magic - plant a sunflower, bees appear!

 

 

 

 

   

 

Saturday August 23rd, 2014    Another Kind of Harvest

We are pleased to have hosted OakHaven early learners once a week over the summer.  It's been a delight to watch the children explore the orchard and get to know the trees, flowers, butterflies, and native plants. One of our goals for the orchard is to be a place of learning, and accomplishing that goal expands the meaning of "harvest".  We look forward to sharing the orchard with the young explorers of OakHaven this fall!

 

Saturday August 16th, 2014    Harvest Begins

 This last week was the start of the CSA season.  I am very pleased with the variety and amounts of apples available to the CSA boxes. This year many of our biennial apples provided a full box the first week - Gravenstein, Lodi, July Red, William's Red, Summer Rose.  Annual apples such as Duchess of Oldenburg and William's Pride fill out the corners, along with Myrobalan plum. Next week the boxes will be graced with a selection of early plums, including the sweet yellow Shiro plums.
NOTE: We still have openings for the 2014 CSA season

 

Saturday August 2nd, 2014    Small problems

Small problems seem to come along as frequently as small miracles.  The pump on our sprayer went out, and we have been unable to keep up on our spraying schedule for the Surround (kaolin clay barrier) which we were depending on as a barrier against codling moth.  We are putting on another round of "sockies" on apples and pears as a fill-in barrier.  

We are hoping to get the sprayer pump repaired and get our last round of Surround spraying done later in August, before we stop spraying on Surround for the season.

 

Wednesday July 30th, 2014    Small miracles

Small miracles ... along with one of the elderberries we planted this spring, a native larkspur came up and is blooming beautifully ... on the new Morello cherries we planted this spring are three gorgeous deep red cherries promising fruit to come ... flowers in the pollinator garden are already attracting bees and butterflies ... every day in the orchard is an adventure and exploration.        

                     

 

Saturday June 21st, 2014   still thinning ....

Although thinning the apples is now over, it is now time to thin the plums, to encourage earlier, sweeter, larger fruit.  It is also time to start pruning the plums and apricots, which need the drier warmer weather to keep pruning cuts from getting infected.  
We will be spraying the Surround on through August to reduce damage by coddling moth.  Thanks to help from Stef and Austen, several of our early eating apples have also been protected by nylon "sockies" dipped in a slurry of Surround, doubling up the protection against coddling moths.  Unfortunately we had unexpectedly run out of sockies and I've been waiting for my replacement order to come in.  Hopefully they will arrive soon and we can get them on the mid and late season apples.   
We've started mailing out the CSA applications to last year's subscribers and people on this year's interest list.  As a response to several smaller households asking for an option for a smaller box, we have just added on a "half-box" option which would offer an average of 5 lbs of fruit every week (ranging from 3 to 7 lbs).  

Tuesday May 27th, 2014   Thinning, thinning, and more thinning

We've started the very labor intensive thinning of the young fruitlets - necessary for reducing codling moth damage, ensuring larger fruit size and sweeter fruit, discouraging biennial (every other year) bearing habits, and encouraging earlier ripening.  This is always an impossible task to actually complete - we just do as much as we can before the second week of June.  At that point bagging the growing fruitlets takes over as the most immediate task.

We are also starting to spray Surround, a kaolin clay barrier that discourages codling moths from laying their eggs on the young fruits.  We are starting with the dwarf trees which have fewer apples to begin with, and early season standard trees such as Sinclair (also known as Early Harvest).  In early June we will start bagging a portion of the young fruits as well, to double up on the protection against codling moth.

We are mowing pathways weekly now, fencing the Dojo Pollinator Garden against deer until the seaberry hedgerow gets going, planting out more flowers and herbs for the pollinators, and celebrating the new growth on the bamboo - already as tall as last year's growth!
 

Tuesday May 6th  2014  Full Bloom

The orchard is in full apple bloom now.  On a warm afternoon, the scent of all the apple blossoms is amazing!                                                                                                         

 BLACK TWIG PARAGON

 PINK PEARL

 HAWK-EYE

 LODI

RHODE ISLAND GREENING

WILLIAM'S PRIDE 

DR. WARD'S GOLDEN RUSSET

EMPIRE (RED CRAB IN BACKGROUND)       

KANDIL SINAP

LOST SHEEP PEARMAIN 
(TOMPKIN'S KING SEEDLING????)

MULTI-GRAFT
  - CHERRY COX
  - FREYBURG
  - CALVILLE BLANC         

 PITMASTON PINEAPPLE

WEALTHY

 ZABERGAU REINETTE

Wednesday April 28th  2014  Native Plants for Pollinators

This year we are focusing on planting a Pollinator Garden on the south side of the dojo building. Around the base of the new fruit trees in that area we have added a selection of native plants purchased at the Plantworks Native Plant Sale (also sponsored by the local William Cusick chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon and Hells Canyon Preservation Council).  We now have wild flax, penstemons, gaillardia (blanket-flower), wild buckwheat and mule's-ears planted around the new peaches and Asian pears.  Although we will also be adding non-native plants that pollinators love (from lavender to sage, chives to spearmint) and non-native plants that will help mulch the ground and keep down grass (such as daylily, rhubarb, comfrey and asparagus), we hope to keep native plants a strong part of the garden.  They are resilient, drought tolerant, beautiful, and provide great habitat and food for the pollinators, while preserving our local plant heritage.

Special thanks and deep gratitude to local plant HERAS (feminine form of hero) Sandy Roth, Laurie Allen and Susan Geer who have made it possible for us, and so many others, to return native species to our/their place.

Wednesday April 9th  2014  New in the Orchard this year - Seaberry

 As the east hedge around the Pollinator Garden (on the south side of the dojo building), with the help of friends we've started planting Seaberry (Hippophae rhamnoides), a fascinating bush fruit from Germany, Russia and Siberia.  This thorny 6' nitrogen-fixing shrub will be part of our "deer re-direction", part of our orchard fertilization, and in three years part of our seasonal fruit subscription boxes, with unusual small orange fruits high in Vitamins C, A and E.  We are trialing 5 different female varieties, two of which are listed as good for "fresh eating".  The others are listed as best for juice, sorbet, smoothies, etc.  
I was fortunate enough to sample some seaberry juice and seaberry sorbet at the All About Fruit Show last October, and fell in love with the flavor ... something between  lemon, papaya and pineapple.  
As there isn't any information about growing Seaberry in our area, I am starting with Siberian varieties that are especially hardy and short season. Seaberry is wind pollinated, and so should reliably provide fruit even in very wet and cold springs.  If this first planting does well, I look forward to including more Seaberry in our variety trials.
You can read an article about Seaberry here  .
We purchased our plants from One Green World nursery .  
Descriptions of the varieties we planted (Star of Altai and Sunny) and the varieties still to arrive next week (Radiant, Orange Delight, Sirola and two male plants) are here

Saturday March 29th  2014  Orchard Family event CANCELED due to weather and delayed tree arrival

 ... the nursery order I had been expecting to arrive before the weekend has not been shipped out yet, so no planting day at this time.  We'll keep you posted as other orchard events come up later this spring.

  Sunday March 23rd, 2014  THANK YOU to wonderful volunteers!

A small and enthusiastic group of volunteers dug 21 holes for trees and shrubs we'll be planting this spring.  Sunny skies and warmer weather helped the event.  I was able to sit outside close to one of the digging areas and chat with the generous folks who showed up to help!  It was the first time I'd been able to sit outside in the orchard since I broke my leg. 

Thursday March 6th, 2014  ..."The best laid plans of mice and men ..."

... and orchardists ... On Monday I took a bad fall at work down some stairs and broke my leg (tibia and fibula) in 3 places close to the ankle.  This will undoubtedly delay spring pruning to early summer as I will need to stay off my foot completely for at least 8 weeks.  Worse than falling behind on pruning (after all trees are very patient beings) is not being able to plant the new trees and plants arriving later this month.  It's over to David, my long suffering husband and one of the few people I know who is as patient as a tree, and to orchard volunteers, to get the holes dug on Saturday March 22nd and new treelets planted on Tuesday March 25th and Saturday March 29th.  These will be family events, with roles for volunteers of every age.  In the meantime I must work at emulating the orchard trees and take the long and patient view.

 Sunday March 2nd, 2014  Spring Begins

We started pruning on Saturday in-between snow showers and continued on Sunday in between rain showers.  With the idea of warming up to the event we started with the dwarf apple trees ... a long term program of bringing them in and up, and, where it seems appropriate, establishing a nominal leader aligned with the trunk to reduce the pressure for every branch to think it needs to be a leader. 

Saturday February 8th, 2014  Orchard Family event CANCELED due to weather

The Ash Toss & Kelp Sprinkle has been CANCELED due to heavy snow with more snow predicted for this afternoon.  While we are glad for the snow cover for the trees, and the future groundwater piling up in the mountains, the heavy snow has set back the "wake up the orchard" part.  Right now time to encourage the trees to keep sleeping!  :)  

Tuesday January 28th, 2014  progress and setbacks

Progress included a small but enthusiastic gathering for the Was Hael (wishing the orchard "good health"), our first Avella Orchard Family Event for 2014.  We toasted the health of the trees and left gifts of toast soaked with cider in the branches.  A special thank you to master baker Leah Starr whose "Bird's Envy" bread will indeed be the envy of the first birds to find it!
Our February family event - ash toss and kelp sprinkle - is scheduled for the second Saturday (Feb. 8th).  Although Feb. 1st is closer to the traditional day of Feb. 2nd (known as Groundhog Day, St. Brigid's Day, and St. Agnes' Day) we have decided to delay the event by a week to allow for more outreach. 
 
Setbacks have included nurseries unable to fill the orders I placed, most notably the apples Lubsk Queen and Wealthy.

Progress includes more future planting sites laid out complete with future wire cages for the little treelets. The manure is still frozen under the top 2 inches on the southeast side, and filling up the wheelbarrow is slow going!  We are up to 7 planting sites done with cardboard, manure, and wire cage ready to go.

All in all, not bad for January. 

Sunday January 5th, 2014 frozen

Despite the warmer air temperatures, the ground is still quite frozen.  Even the pile of wood chips and the pile of horse manure are almost all frozen solid still.  Yesterday I manged to move what had melted onto a spring planting site south of the dojo, along with a base layer of cardboard and newspaper.  My goal is to have all the planting sites mulched with layered cardboard, manure and wood chips by March 1st, and to have the planting holes dug before Spring break when the trees will arrive.  I also have a goal of having the wire cages and base pins constructed and by the planting sites by then.  We'll see how it goes! 

  Friday December 18th, 2013  ringing in the new

Ordering lists are done, and most of the orders have been mailed in.  
From Burnt Ridge Nursery, we'll be planting in March a Lubsk Queen apple, a Wealthy apple,  a Montrose apricot, a Belle Epine grafted chestnut, and a Schrader grafted chestnut. The two apples will be on seedling Antonovka rootstock, which will give us a large tree able to withstand the extremes of both freezing winter temperatures and summer drought and heat and, unlike trees on dwarf or semi-dwarf rootstock, will easily live to 100 years and very likely longer.   The chestnut trees, if we can get them established (they are a bit on the touchy side), will be feeding people 300 years from now.   
From Raintree Nursery, we'll be planting 3 Asian pears - Shinsui, Hamese, and Ichiban - to help fill out the August and early September boxes in the years to come; English Morello tart cherry to help expand the CSA harvest season to early August; Asian plum Beauty - again for the early August boxes; and European plums Purple Gage, Monsieur Hatif, and Mt. Royal to fill out the late August and early September boxes.  I will also be experimenting with a Hardy Chicago fig up against the south wall of the dojo.  
From Trees of Antiquity, we'll be planting 3 heirloom peaches - George IV, Peregrine, and Strawberry Free - also south of the dojo where we have the most warm and sheltered location.  Unfortunately, our order for Lamb Abbey Pearmain apple was placed too late - they are already sold out of this heirloom tree for 2014!
We are still finalizing orders to place with One Green World Nursery and Walden Heights Nursery, so check back to see what those will be!

 

 Saturday November 23rd, 2013  the shape of things to come 

If spring and summer shape what the orchard is, late fall and winter shape what the orchard will become.
This is the season of walking through the orchard and imagining forward in time; agonizing over the tree orders for 2014 spring planting; struggling to understand what was - what is - and what could be; and somehow divine good choices that will result one hundred years from now in an orchard that is diverse, abundant, fruitful, and resilient. 
I pore over current and older editions of the Seed Saver's Fruit, Berry and Nut Inventory, nursery catalogs, and favorites lists from long time orchardists.  I create comparison charts of different cultivars, gleaning information from different sources to fill in the gaps.  
Every year this process results in changes, shifts, balances, new directions - a slightly different future for this precious orchard - and hopefully a more informed one!  While keeping to the original vision, general precepts and key principles, I try to take new information and knowledge of the orchard itself - and combine it with new information and knowledge gained outside the orchard.  
Each year I grow older I also feel the pressure of the time remaining to me, and try to balance it with the very different time frame of the orchard itself.
Then I need to take all that and balance it with the resources I have for creating the orchard's future self.  
It's quite a process, and one that winds around on itself, with me second-guessing myself and going back to the drawing board again and again.  And then it will be spring, the trees will arrive and be planted, and thus the future created.  May it be for the benefit of all beings.

 Monday  September 2, 2013     ...and the rains came

This Labor Day holiday morning we are again graced by rain, gentle, persistent, refreshing, cleansing.  It comes as a gift after the Vector Control widespread spraying of the city of La Grande for mosquitoes on Wednesday night.  The surprise spraying was a setback, but also an opportunity to learn.  I had seen the sign blocks away on late Wednesday afternoon "mosquito spraying after 9 pm" and had gone online to search the city, county and local newspaper sites for more information.  None of those locations listed any notice of spraying so I mistakenly assumed the spraying would be localized from a truck.  Thursday morning I went to change the water in the birdbath (a daily chore) and found a thick coating of moths, midges, other insects and a few mosquitoes floating on the surface.  I realized the spraying must have been city-wide and from a plane.  Over the next few days I researched the powers of Vector Control and the state laws affecting them.  It was discouraging to find out that Vector Control districts have the right to spray any property at any time with no notice if they feel there is a risk or potential risk of disease spread by vectors such as mosquitoes.    
For the boxes picked Friday, Sunday and Monday, I hand-wiped each individual piece of fruit with a damp washcloth, and advised CSA clients to also wash the fruit before using.
This week I will be calling our local Vector Control district to ask what was sprayed, how it was sprayed, and if there is a way to get an exemption for small operations pursuing organic certification.
Besides rain this morning, we have a small herd of deer in the orchard - several does and fawns, along with a 4 point buck, gazing on the lower branches of the plums and elderberry.  Yesterday evening we had a family of quail clucking along "kiwi way", and roosting in the old apricot there.  Graces, and my gratitude, continue. 

  Sunday  August 25, 2013     Grace of Rain

We are  very grateful for the afternoon/evening rains that have been watering the far edges of the orchard and keeping the temperatures cooler.  Early mornings are crisp now, and I can feel fall in the air.  The cooler temperatures have been slowing down the pace of fruit ripening; I had expected the Alabaster plums and Bartlett pears to be in full swing and instead they are hanging back, ripening only a precious few at a time. 
The few Gravenstein apples (this is an off year for this biennial bearer) that ripened were hit hard by coddling moth, so they ended up in fruit leather trials and cooking trials.  Next year the Gravenstein should be in abundance, along with other early apples that are taking this year off, including Lodi and William's Red.
This year it has been the plums that are in abundance, especially the amazing Shiro plum on the north side of the orchard.  This is the fourth week I have been harvesting, and finally opened up the tree to friends for gleaning as the plums are definitely ripe to over-ripe.
Another surprise has been the Thundercloud plum - which came on slow and appeared to be bearing lightly until suddenly it seemed like there were purple plums everywhere among the purple-green leaves.
More plums are bearing abundantly too this year, and will be ripening over the next month, as other fruits come on. The last of the American-Asian crosses, Toka, keeps fooling me with beautiful pink-red coloring, but every time I test one, it's not quite ready to pick.  Bye Rambo is coming on too, lightly this year, but always one of my favorites.  The Shiro on the south side of the orchard ripens much later than the tree on the north side I've been harvesting from, but only has a few plums this year.  On the north side the Green Gage is dripping with small round plums that are hard now but should be ripe in 2 - 3 weeks.  And all the European prune-plums are bearing heavily this year as well.
It's always an adventure as I go out in the orchard every week to find out what is ready to harvest, an adventure and a delight.

Sunday  August 18, 2013     Chores Done and Undone

Top priority on the chores now is harvesting for the CSA boxes.This week's harvest includes a generous helping of the delicious Shiro plums, as well as the very last of the other early plums and the first of the European-style Obendorf plums. 

Timber Bamboo

Second priority is watering. 
All the bamboo hedges and the new filberts on the dojo flat all still need to be hand-watered, along with plants in pots we're growing up for fall planting.  
The good news is that we have the irrigation pipe to the south orchard repaired now, and have been able to triple the amount of sprinklers running at one time in the south.  

Third priority is continuing the mulching with newspaper, cardboard, and wood chips, one of the never-ending chores.

Male Hardy Kiwi

Fourth priority is planting out the three female and one male Hardy Kiwis we've been growing up in pots since the spring, now that we have the new fencing in the north orchard up.  These smooth-skinned kiwis are smaller than the fuzzy kiwis found in grocery stores but with the same remarkable flavor. They have the advantage of being very cold hardy, unlike the fuzzy kiwis.  I should be getting the first fruit off these prolific vines in two years.  These plants came from One Green World nursery.
 
Fifth priority is picking up the apple and pear windfalls - unripe fruit that fell early because if infestation from codling moth. This is part of limiting coddling moth damage.    That chore I hope to get to this week. I'm also hoping to connect with someone who has livestock (cows, or horses, or pigs, or goats, or sheep, or chickens, or rabbits) that could put these windfalls to good use.

The sixth priority is one I may not get to again this year - summer pruning.  The plums and apricots need to be pruned in the drier summer weather to prevent bacterial canker and other cool moist weather infections. Apples and pears benefit from late summer pruning of waterspouts (the tall vertical new growth), and also pruning for improved air circulation and sun ripening at the beginning of the harvest time.  

  Sunday  August 11, 2013     Starting the Harvest Season

This week-end starts the official harvest season with the early plums - La Crescent, Shiro, Thundercloud, and Obendorf Satsuma.  
The Methley, planted last year, is not yet fruiting but hopefully will join the August contingent next year.  
I've been eating La Crescent for a week now, and expect to be harvesting the last of them this next week-end.  I've made some fruit leather from the puree (processed through a hand-crank food mill to separate out the pits and skins) and it is very tasty but also fairly sour - with the Asian plums the sweet flavor of the fresh fruit seems to be lost with drying or cooking.  In the future I hope to blend the Asian plum purees with a sweeter fruit (peach, apple, apricot, pear) for fruit leather and for freezing in an ice cube tray for instant frozen fruit smoothies.  
Shiro is just coming on and I expect three weeks of harvest from this sturdy and reliable tree.  
The plum listed as Thundercloud is a very tall, upright purple-leafed tree that ripens over a month, with only a few plums at a time ready to harvest.  I am not sure on the name as this tree, taller than any of our apples, seems to be quite different from the much shorter and less tasty Thundercloud trees listed in nursery catalogs.  
Another naming mystery is the Obendorf Satsuma, which is quite unlike any Satsuma plums I've seen, with a much drier European Plum-style yellow flesh.  It is also freestone, unlike many of the Asian plums.  The Obendorf plum is not listed in any nursery catalogs or fruit tree references, so I am assuming it is one of Mr. Ryan's local variants that he grafted.  The fruit ripens over 6 weeks, with never many ripe at one time. 
Week-ends from now until November will be an all-out marathon of harvest :) 

  Sunday  August 4, 2013     Fencing

Deer have continued to munch on the new filberts in the dojo flat area, despite our best efforts to keep them to the outside of the bamboo circle.  We ran chicken wire behind the bamboo, and then netting above that, but they have jumped that barrier rather easily.  Deer have also figured out how to go through the northwest corner where the fencing does not connect, seem to have no qualms about walking in on the pathway next to the dojo building, and hardly notice the chicken wire gateway to the north. So, finally, the filberts have individual cages.  I am hoping  that this new level of protection will afford enough of a buffer for the filberts to thrive until, like our filberts by the driveway, they are tall enough to survive hungry deer with the munchies.  I look forward to the day when we can safely release these filberts from their cages, and have less metal to look at and more green. 
The good news is that deer seem to leave the bamboo alone, after a few brief nibbles when first planted.   I had read a few references on this, but was not confident of the information until I saw the evidence myself.
The appetites of deer continue to prune our standard-sized apple trees up above that 5' line, and to lean heavily on the apple trees with dwarfing rootstock.  This volunteer pruning is one of several reasons we have decided to plant full-sized fruit trees, favoring the Russian Antonovka rootstock. 
Still I am happy to see, when I'm up early, the doe and her spotted fawn walking in the north side of the orchard.  Their presence is somehow a vote of confidence that we must be doing something right, that the orchard is wild enough to harbor them.  

Sunday  July 28, 2013     About Figs

The hot weather  persists, and watering continues to take up too much of my orchard time. In the midst of moving hoses and hand-watering hard to reach areas, we took the time to take a gamble and planted two new plants - a Giant Timber Bamboo (Phyllostachys vivax) and a Desert King fig tree.  Both are edgy in this zone, but possible.  
According to One Green World, Giant Timber Bamboo "produces tasty shoots", and under ideal circumstances can grow to 60 feet high, with 7" diameter canes.  Although ours will probably top out at 2/3 of that or less, given our harsh climate, this large bamboo would provide canes large enough for construction and craft.  
Desert King fig is listed as the most frost hardy fig in the Pacific Northwest.  Although it will need winter protection from hard freezes, it should survive, especially where we planted it - on the south side of the concrete block dojo building, the warmest microclimate we have here.  If it does well over this winter, we plan on planting more next spring, and to also trial the Hardy Chicago fig from Raintree Nursery.  Besides being sheltered by the warm south wall, the figs would help to provide summer shade, cooling the south side of the building during the hottest months, and then letting in the winter sun to warm it.
Why plant figs and bamboo, when we are struggling to keep our apples, pears, and plums cared for?  That's a complicated question - and part of the answer comes from the remarkable gift of this orchard by those who came before us to the present.  Starting with Mr. Ryan, these were people who planted what might grow here, what wasn't available other places, what could become a legacy to this area. We are carrying on that legacy of expanding what the orchard, our beloved "fruit forest", has to offer. 

 

Wednesday  July 17, 2013     Hot weather, and hand-wrapping

 With the hot weather comes the push to keep the orchard watered, especially this year's plantings.  While the long term plan is to move to drip irrigation, right now the issue is just getting water to the trees.  It's shocking how quickly the soil can dry out, especially where the grass has been mowed for pathways.  Mulch mulch and ever more mulch is part of "water management" here in the orchard.  
We've also been experimenting with putting on "sockies" for coddling moth control.  These expandable nylon baggies fit over a quarter-sized apple and then expand as the apple grows.  For extra protection, we also dipped the "sockies" in a slurry of Surround (basically kaolin clay) that is irritating to the coddling moth and discourages egg laying.  Once dry, we slip the "sockies" over the growing fruit. Enough of the fine clay breaks off in this process to irritate my eyes and skin, so now I wear goggles and a dust mask when installing the Surround-dipped "sockies".  
So far we've hand-wrapped over 900 "sockies" onto apples and pears.
I'm REALLY hoping they live up to their reputation to keep coddling moth out of the fruit!

 

Saturday  May 18, 2013     Thinning, thinning and more thinning

We're well into thinning here at the orchard.  Thinning is one of those key chores ... promoting tree health, reducing coddling moth damage, and increasing fruit size and flavor.  For apple trees that tend towards biennial bearing, thinning is essential in evening out the "on-off" cycle.  It's a very peaceful, if very time-consuming and shoulder-aching, chore.  Larger "industrial" model orchards thin by chemical sprays on blossoms.  As part of our orchard mission is to promote the health and well-being of pollinators, we have made a choice to thin by hand after bloom time.  
At the same time, pruning and weeding and mulching chores continue to need to be done, along with mowing the grassy pathways and watering all the new plantings.  It makes for a crowded week-end, along with enjoying local events like the Spring Alive! dances and the Ladd Marsh Bird Festival.  During the week, we also get some time in early in the morning and late in the evening.
Good news ... this is the first year we have had quail here, several pairs now.  Attracting and keeping quail has been one of my benchmarks for orchard health, so I am delighted by their presence.  I see birds, as well as the bumblebees and butterflies, as indicators of how we are doing.  It seems overwhelming at times to consider the orchard as an entire ecosystem restoration project, but the rewards include tangible and immediate benefit - while out thinning the dwarf fruit trees on the north side this evening, we listened to birdsong, including the quail. No better place to be, no better thing to be doing.  

Sunday  May 5, 2013     ... and May Flowers

It's easier now to say what isn't blooming than what is.
The quince are still in bud; last year they bloomed at the end of May.
The apples are mostly in full bloom now, with only Kingston Black still in bud.  
The pears are almost through blooming and ready for thinning (aaahhh!!!!).
The European plums are in full bloom now, and already just starting to fade.
The Asian plums are past bloom now, and the apricots well past bloom.

For some of the apples that are biennial, I can see now who is in an "off" year and who is resplendent with bloom.  No Baldwins, Kerry's Pippin or William's Pride this year, and very few Lodi, Wealthy, Wagnor, Golden Russett and Blue Pearmain.  On the plus side of the equation, Lost Sheep Pearmain, Idawhite, Missouri Pippin, Cinnamon Spice, Mollie's Delicious and the amazing Pitmaston Pineapple - all apples that we didn't get to enjoy last year - are full of blooms this year.  
Standbys like Tollgate Alexander and White Winter Pearmain are blooming heavily too. 
Northwest Greening, which had its first two apples last year, is also covered in bloom - a celebration for old trees coming back!

Some have asked if we got the pruning done.  Not even close!  Not only is pruning the never-ending chore throughout the year (I keep intending to focus on summer pruning ...), but our focus has been planting and mulching.  Friends have been bringing us aged horse manure - a very welcome gift indeed! - that we have been spreading around on the older plum trees and mixing in for the new plantings. We have also been lucky in getting loads of wood chips that are going on top of the manure and around the new plantings.  The wood chips have been aging for a few months and are wonderfully on their way to duff.

So here's to the orchard, to new and old tree friends, and happy May to all!

Sunday  April 21, 2013   April Showers, April Flowers

First week of April saw the apricots in bloom, even as snow fell.
Second week the pluot (apricot and plum cross) and Asian plums (Purple Heart and Climax) on the north side came into bloom.
Third week more Asian plums bloomed - the Shiro plum on the north side, and the Satsuma.
This weekend the peaches and cherries on the north side have begun blooming, and the Asian plums on the south side - Shiro and Methley.  The Hug's Opo Pear blossoms are just starting to open up.  
Of the peaches, the first to bloom was George IV, next Belle of Georgia, and then Charlotte.    
Quite a few apples are now showing pink on the tips of the flower buds, and the rest of the pears look to start very soon.
 

April 8th, 2013  March snow and melt

We took off the end of March - Spring Break - to get a lot of planting done.  
With the help of Aikido students and their friends, we worked on planting the "Dojo flat" just north of our dojo.  This involved rototilling the planting area repeatedly, raking out clumps of grass and rocks ( a LOT of rocks!). We then added a mix of shredded coconut shells (called coir fiber) and kelp meal we had purchased from Naomi's Organics in Portland, Oregon, and aged manure donated by another Aikido student.  We planted 15 bamboo (P. nuda - Green Bamboo) from One Green World in Portland, Oregon in the east outer ring.  These bamboo should reach 12 - 15 feet high starting next year, forming a wonderful "green wall" for our outdoor classroom.  Inside that ring, we planted 10 filberts in the inner east ring, from One Green World, Burnt Ridge Nursery, and Raintree Nursery.  Filbert varieties include Yamhill, Jefferson, Theta, Eta, Gamma, and Tonda di Giofoni.  These filberts will form an 8 - 10 foot high inner wall for the "Dojo flat".  In addition to planting, we also managed to get the filberts and bamboos mulched first with newspaper and then covered with aged wood chips.  Beween the two rows we laid down weed block fabric, and covered it first with newspaper and then with new wood chips.  We also managed to get fencing installed on the outside edge of the bamboo ring to discourage deer from browsing on the bamboo and filberts.  In the future, when the planting is mature, we expect to be able to take the fencing down, as the bamboo and filberts would create a thick hedge.  
Along with planting the "Dojo flat", we planted out 2 chestnuts in the north side of the orchard from Burnt Ridge Nursery, to provide pollination for our 2 mature chestnuts that have been lacking suitable pollen sources.  
We also increased the planting of native shrubs along the orchard borders, adding 3 golden currants, 3 sagebrush, 2 mountain mahogany, 2 serviceberry, 2 Rocky Mtn. juniper, 2 wax currants, 1 wild rose and 1 mock orange.   Last year's native shrub plantings (elderberry, golden currant, wax currant, mock orange, Douglas maple) are mostly doing well, although we did lose one of the Douglas maples.   All our native shrub plantings come from Plantworks, a native plant nursery in Cove, Oregon. Their 2nd annual Native Plant Sale & Appreciation Day, co-sponsored by Plantworks, Hells Canyon Preservation Council, and the William Cusick Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon,  will be later this month - Saturday April 20th, from 9 am - 3 pm.  This is a great opportunity to learn about native plants, and to take some home too!   
While utilizing resources from around the world (bamboo, coir) we also seek to support and expand plantings of locally sourced native species.  

February 28th, 2013    February Thaw

During a warm spell, I lost my usual inhibition about planting in February. We planted 3 almonds (cold-hardy Ukrainian varieties - Nikita's Pride, Seaside, and Bounty - from One Green World), and even managed to get fencing up around them within 24 hours of planting. We still have deer passing through, and the trimming they've managed on the arborvitae convinces me that they would take a bite out of anything within reach. 
The filbert tassels have turned a beautiful golden color, and if you look closely, you can find the tiny (VERY tiny!) red flowers that have now opened, waiting for pollen.  They need this week of warm weather to set the pollen, and I'm very glad for it. We have ordered more filberts to plant as a hedge around the dojo flat - and the last week of March I'll be taking time off from work to get them in the ground and fenced.
We're considering planting a Japanese heartnut to the east of the old asparagus patch to serve as a shade tree for benches and kid's play area.  It seems strange to be thinking about creating shade when right now all I crave is sun and more sun.
Almonds, filberts, walnuts and their relatives - I have the courage to plant those after the 20 years experimenting with various orchard trees at a much higher elevation and harsher site - colder in the winter, harder spring cold snaps, perched soils, hotter summers, drought conditions, earlier fall frosts.  I planted, grew and harvested Hall's Hardy and All-in-One almonds; Barcelona, Royal, and Daviana filberts; Russian and Chopaka walnuts. Not many, true, but getting any under those conditions was nothing short of miraculous. I also planted, grew, and then lost to voles or drought, butternuts, other walnuts, and a variety of chestnuts (the voles devoured the chestnuts one winter - trees that had been growing for five years).  I learned a lot from all the nut and fruit trees I planted, both those that survived and those I lost. 
I had the courage to trial those trees up on Cricket Flats because of the generousity of others who shared their knowledge and experience with me over the years.  
When I step out into Avella Orchard, I carry with me the orchard from Cricket Flats, and all the other orchards I worked in, walked in, visited, and all the orchard people who worked those orchards. My deepest thanks to them, and to those who planted and cared for and preserved this orchard over the years. 
If we plant the heartnut, it will quite possibly be feeding people two hundred years from now.  From what I've read heartnuts can be at full production that long, and even live longer. When I feel frozen by terrible things happening in the world -  I walk out into the orchard and feel the ground thaw, and think about what to plant next, for the future, for those who come after us.
Blessings to all -

Tuesday January 15th, 2013  January Snow

Snow is on the ground, birds on the feeder and water tray, and the tree branches are bare.  I'm munching on an apple crisp made from apples I had wrapped in paper towels and stored in the basement - White Winter Pearmain (tasty but soft), Westfield-Seek-No-Further (very flavorful but also turning soft), Alexander (almost sponge-like but still good), and one York Imperial (crisp!).  As most of these apples were harvested after a couple hard freezes, I'm impressed that they are keeping at all.  York Imperial stands out as a great keeper ... the flavor is definitely better now than in November.
There is so much to write about - our adventures at the Home Orchard Society Fall event, decision-making about spring planting, results of spraying with Surround (kaolin clay), planning orchard events for 2013.
The short version - it appears that some of the orchard trees may be mis-labelled; we're focusing on planting filberts and chestnuts in 2013; we're very happy with the 40 - 60% protection from Surround and plan on using it in 2013 (already purchased from Naomi's Organic Farm Supply in Portland) along with trials of "fruit sox" soaked in Surround on some of our choice apples. 
It's off to class now, and catching up on writing later! 

Friday, October 19, 2012

We're off to the Home Orchard Society "All About Fruit Show" this weekend at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds in Canby, OR (south of Portland).   It's the biggest fall fruit tasting in Oregon - hundreds (yes, hundreds) of varieties of apples, of pears, and an amazing collection of other fall fruit (quinces, anyone?).  There are workshops, displays, experts to consult with, and generally a lot of people who know and care a lot about fruit trees.  You can buy just the right pair of hand pruners, look over and purchase the latest books on fruit trees, fruit, and orcharding, taste unusual fruits like sea berry and goumi, drink fresh-pressed apple cider, and have a wonderful time immersed in this great community of plant people.
If I can be organized enough, I hope to bring samples of several unique varieties to their Fruit ID experts - I'd love to know if our Hug's Opo pear, Lost Sheep Pearmain apple, Sinclair apple and IdaWhite apple are local names for known fruit varieties or separate new varieties unknown to the larger community.  We also have a mystery apple tree I'd love to get identified.  If I get that organized ...
Fall is a chaos of ripening, harvesting, processing, and getting the orchard ready for winter right now, and I am doing my best to not whimper at the growing list undone chores and tasks.  Fortunately, few beings are more patient than trees.  I keep in mind the ways this fall is more prepared than last fall - especially with the new dehydrators (now I just need time to keep them filled and working!).
I also keep in mind the deep gratitude I have for those who planted these trees that I cherish, and those who  carried these varieties forward over the centuries.  An orchard exists in the past and in the future as well as in the present.
On a lighter note, I now have it on good authority through several trials and voters, that Avella Orchard's best late September/October combination of flavors for apple crisps and apple butter is a mixture of the Tollgate Alexander and the Wealthy apples.  Thank you to those who shared their experiences and recipes! 

Posted by Danae at 3:08 AM 

Monday, October 8, 2012   If it looks like an apple, but it's really a walnut ...

Bad  news on the walnuts - I had noticed some of the walnut trees seemed to be affected by a blackening on part or all of the hull.  I had originally thought that this might be from a late season lack of water.  What the problem turned out to be was the dreaded coddling moth.  In walnuts? I double-checked my resources, and found a few obscure references.  After all, the hull of the walnut is actually a "fruit", the shell a "pit", and the nut a "kernel" inside the "pit"/shell.  In all but one that I checked, the larvae were only in the outside "fruit" hull.  In the one exception where coddling moth had penetrated to the nut inside the shell, the shell was cracked. 
The outside damage to the the hull is more than cosmetic.  The hulls with coddling moth larvae were not only darkened but were also soft/degraded, with the rotted black gunk sticking to the nut shell, taking a LOT of effort to clean off.  
There appears to be a wide difference in the susceptibility to coddling moth among the walnut varieties.  Hardest hit (with most of the walnuts being affected) were the 2 Utah Giant trees.  The Sommers was about 40 - 50% affected.  The Kelly Hill (my current fav for flavor) were pretty much untouched, and there were none at all on the Lake.  Both the Kelly Hill and the Lake have smaller, thicker, harder nuts than the Sommers or the Utah Giant.  The Utah Giant also has the thinnest shell, easy to crack just with your hand,  and coincidentally the thickest hull (green fleshy part).  Other walnut trees not yet harvested appear to have little or no codling moth/blackened hull damage.  I'll report more later this month on those trees. 
I have to say it was more than a bit discouraging to find out coddling moth had affected my walnut harvest as well as the apples and pears.  I actually entertained thoughts of cutting down the 2 Utah Giant trees.  I think it would be good instead to start with a heavy load of wood chips under those walnuts to promote spiders and beetles, and perhaps even spraying the trees with the Surround/kaolin clay, and wrapping the trunks with cardboard.  Although coddling moth DEFINITELY will fly in, the majority of the infestation come from overwintering pupae in the ground under the trees and in bark crevices.  If I can reduce that re-infestation and only deal with the fly-in, I'd be way ahead of where I am now. 
I also noticed that the coddling moth larvae in the walnut hulls were mostly immature still, indicating that perhaps they are a third generation re-infestation and the walnuts are not that bothered in the first and perhaps even the second hatch.  
What I am certain of is that bigger is not always better (give me Kelly Hill over Utah Giant any day!), orcharding is NEVER boring, and it's important to KNOW YOUR ENEMY - this winter I will be reading up again on coddling moth and laying out plans for foiling their amazing population density and adaptability. 
And some good news - my new Living Foods Dehydrator is doing a great job gently drying the walnuts I harvested this week-end.  Last year's problem solved  .... 

Sunday, September 30, 2012

October starts tomorrow ... on this last day of September I am harvesting filberts, drying apples, and evaluating dehydrators.  
One of the conclusions I've reached over the last year is that dehydrators are on my "must have" equipment list, as much for the filberts and walnuts as for fruit.  Last year I lost most of the walnut crop due to not having a good drying system in place.  I am determined to not go though that loss again.  
I am also greatly encouraged that small producers like me can now sell dried fruit at Farmer's Markets if it is clearly labeled as a home processed product.  With any perishable crop, the challenge is how to extend the opportunities for marketing. Being able to sell dried apples, pears, and plums lengthens the season for selling far beyond the few weeks that particular apple or pear or plum is ripe.  

Westfied Seek-No-Further apples

The special challenge/benefit I have here is that heirloom varieties often ripen over a long time (my Alexander tree will have a few ripe apples every week for over two months).  It's hard to have enough of any one fruit at any one time to sell fresh.  My plan for a future CSA will help with that, as will being able to market dried fruit. 
All this is taking much much longer to pull together than I had hoped.  I am still learning what fruit ripens when, how much each tree produces, how the different apples are best used, how the different apples cook up in a stirfry or bake in an apple crisp, how long it takes to dry, what the dried fruit tastes like.  I'm trialing different packaging options (my favorite so far is brown waxed paper bags) and storage systems, experimenting with labels, and spending most of my week-end slicing and loading up the Nesco dryers I'm currently using. And munching a lot of dried apples. In the meantime I am sharing fruit with friends, family, co-workers and the gleaning crew that ORA brought together last week. 

Empire apples

After reading articles and reviews, I've decided to order 2 different kinds of dryers to accommodate ever-larger list of apple varieties ready to trial (October is our main apple month) and the walnuts which will be ready to harvest this month.  My choices are a Living Foods dehydrator (uses convection heating - no fan - should be ideal for drying the walnuts and filberts in the shell) and  Excalibur dehydrator (box type with removable trays - with fan for quicker drying).  Both Excalibur and Living Food Systems are made in the US (one of my considerations, among many) and have good track records.  It's a big investment, but my little Nesco wonders can't handle the volume of apples or the size of the nuts (the walnuts are too large to fit in the stacking trays).  
 
In the meantime, I need to go rotate the trays in the Nesco dryers now and start slicing up more apples.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Reflections and an Apple Photo Shoot

There are always mysteries in an orchard.

This last week there was the sudden appearance of praying mantises ... three large and very different individuals showing up on the outside of a dojo window screen (the large dark brown one), inside my bathroom (the light tan one politely escorted outside), and the mulched pathway (bright green on aged pine needles and bark chips - hardly disguised).  A sign of fall? like the spider egg cases?

There are the mysteries of mistaken identities and missing labels - an apple tree with no identification, not on the map we inherited, not in any label.  The apple is a fine eating apple, crisp and juicy and a little tart, and seems reminiscent to me of a Gravenstein, but not quite the full Gravenstein flavor.

I did a "photo shoot" of the apple to take to the Home Orchard Society "All About Fruit" show in October.  There are individual apple shots, cross cut views, side cut views, stem end, blossom end, and a group shot to show the variance in color.  The photo shoot is kind of fun to do, and makes a nice break from cutting apples to dry (our mystery apple makes a very tasty dried apple!).  In the future I plan on having a page for every apple with what I know about it and an even more complete photo shoot, including the bark, blossoms, leaves, and general tree shape.  OK, OK, in the far future when I have far more time than I do now!

 

Some mysteries can be "solved". There are always millions of questions that may or may not get answered ... yes, the coddling moth do go after the pears more if the apples are sprayed (and a reminder of unintended consequences - when coddling moth go after pears, I've found that the softer pears rot from the inside out, often showing no sign on the outside until they fall off the tree and smash open.  We're definitely going to be short of edible pears this year).

 

Then there are the mysteries of beginnings and endings ... the graft on the baby treelet that took, the graft that didn't.  That any graft makes it seems more of a miracle than a mystery! We lost one out of the three benchgrafts from Greenmantle Nursery we planted this spring, but I'm actually encouraged to try more benchgrafts from them in the future.  The treelets when they arrive are painfully small, but come on much faster than I would have imagined (until the deer found them - but that is my fault for not sizing the cage correctly - they outgrew their cages in July!).  

 

Then there are mysteries that move beyond beyond words ... in the whispering of leaves at night, the way the light plays among the branches in the morning, in the slow circling of the seasons from blossom to fruit to bare branch to blossom again, in the grief of the loss of an old and venerable tree, in the joy and hope of new growth on a young tree. 

There are always mysteries in an orchard.  

 

Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Story of Two Apples

Speaking of heritage apples, I am now harvesting and drying William's Red, a tastier (and less mealy) apple than July Red.  William's Red seems to be the same as or definitely closely related to William's Favorite and William's Early Red.  It's a problem with all these local variants of names that develop over time, that also might possibly be the seedling progeny of these or just a slightly different sport. All of these have in common a history dating back to the 1750's in Massachusetts, with William's Favorite listed as coming from the orchard of a Captain Benjamin Williams in Roxbury, Massachusetts.  All three are listed as early apples, and the ones in my orchard show that wonderful golden to orange color under the red cheek, speckled, almost slightly russet, a look I associate with older heirlooms.  They also have that complexity of flavor that I also associate with heirloom russetted apples.  I certainly highly recommend this apple!

Also coming in now is William's Pride, I suspect related but a modern descendant, a much more recent introduction in 1988. Although a fine apple, and bred for disease resistance, it has none of that indescribable flavor I find in William's Red.  I must admit to a strong bias towards apple varieties that come down to us from the past, that have been known and loved and carried forward graft by graft through time.  An apple like William's Red links me to a time before the American Revolutionary War.  This apple fed the recruits that served under Washington, that fought for American independence.  Eating this apple is sharing history.  I can also share this history by sharing scionwood from my tree, or even grafting my own new trees.  William's Pride, although developed in university research (Purdue) as part of the PRI series, is a corporate apple.  It is numbered, listed, protected. As I understand it, I can't legally take scionwood from my tree and graft a new William's Pride.  Somehow I don't think Captain Benjamin Williams would be very proud of that.  

Give me heirlooms every time!

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Plum Delights

Purple Heart, La Crescent, Underwood, Burton

August is plum season.  As of today I am eating six different kinds of plums!  
The first are La Cresecent, a tall willowy tree, Japanese x American  plum, small and round, yellow with a red blush.  Developed by the University of Minnesota, the tree was introduced in 1919. It's listed as freestone, but mine appear to be clingstone.  I do agree with "Excellent quality for fresh eating", although it over-ripens quickly.
Next to come in are a few early ripening Burton (European prune plum type), not the finest but the first, and making a very good dried plum.  
At the same time, I'm enjoying munching on the Purple Heart,  a deep red-purple Japanese plum with wonderful flavor and juicy red-purple flesh.  The plum is listed in the Fruit, Berry, and Nut Inventory 2nd Edition as probably originating in New Hampshire! 
The Shiro, a popular Japanese plum on the north side of the orchard, are also just starting to ripen, a few of these small yellow plums getting soft and sweet, if somewhat insipid to my taste.
Finally, on Saturday and today, I had the first of the Climax plums, a Japanese-style plum I've not been able to find listed anywhere.  This plum though lives up to its name.  It is remembered fondly by anyone who knows this orchard (I'm finding adults in town who used to play in this orchard as children!).  
The big surprise for me this season though was the Underwood plum, a very early (with the first of the La Cresecent) Japanese x Shiro cross, large and luscious, juicy and sweet, red skin and yellow flesh.  It's listed as a "vigorous, long lived tree. Early, annual, productive bearer." Oh, and did I mention it's hardy to minus 50?  Another release from the University of Minnesota, in 1921.  
All this is only part of the story. I'm beginning to understand that the heritage in these plums is as remarkable as the heritage of apple and pear varieties, and as endangered.  
The 2nd edition of the Fruit, Berry, and Nut Inventory, published in 1993, lists 14 nursery sources for Underwood plum.  In the 4th edition, from 2009, there are only 2, and one of those may no longer be in business.  La Cresecent went from 8 sources in 1993 to only 4 sources in 2009.   Purple Heart, never well known, is down to 2 sources in 2009.  Burton has only 1 source.

Top: Underwood, La Crescent   2nd row: Purple Heart, Burton

How does a once-popular plum like Underwood, with great flavor, large, juicy, productive, annual, long lived, and hardy, start disappearing?  Why isn't it still dearly beloved and widely planted?  Was that it didn't ripen all at once?  That it's clingstone?  That the small stone seems to shatter easily, making it difficult to process?  That no Japanese style plum ships well?  
Perhaps the heritage movement and slow food movement will encourage an embrace of heirloom plums as they have popularized heirloom apples, pears, and now peaches.  I hope so.  And I hope that when it does I will be in position to graft new Underwood trees from my old tree and share them with those who have a passion for the best tasting fresh fruit. 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Time moving on

How did it get to be August?  

Seems like yesterday that we were thinning, and thinning, and thinning little tiny pre-fruits, and now we're starting harvest.  Oh, and watering, and watering, and watering.  

Irrigation pipes we used last year were mostly broken and on their last legs, so we tried various spray-sprinklers from hoses, that proceeded to stop working and break down during the hottest of our hot spells (of course). Now we are on round two of sprinklers, going with old-fashioned lawn sprinklers with fewer moving parts to break down or snap off.  So glad we only have 2.5 acres to water!  Next year we definitely need to go to drip irrigation and micro-sprinklers.  Top priority.

The good new from this year is that our first attempts at using Surround to lower codling moth damage are a success! We harvested our first bowl of un-coddled apples this last week-end.  It's about 50% ... 12 coddle free apples out of 22 picked (variety - July Red).  I'm ecstatic as last year it was 99.9999% apples with coddling moth damage. 

By the by, July Red, not a thrilling fresh apple (although it is the first! and very welcome!) it turns out makes a delicious dried apple, and gets my rating as a very good cooking apple (stir fried in with onions and other veggies!  keeps it's shape, without staying hard, cooks up very tender and tasty).  They do need to be picked frequently as they turn mealy-mushy when over-ripe.  I've also been munching on a few William's Red, and the Lodi are nearly ready and could be picked now for applesauce.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Orchard Visitors

It's barely spring now, and I'm just starting to think about pruning, planting, blossoms. 

Spring visitors have arrived - grosbeaks crowded the birdfeeders one snowy morning, white-crowned sparrows can be heard on a sunny day, and once again I'm having to chase away starlings from nesting over my porch.  

We've had human visitors too - Avella Orchard hosted the Master Gardener's group on Saturday March 3rd. We talked about pruning and grafting as we wandered the orchard, meeting the trees, collecting scionwood from some of them to share with members of the group ready to go home and try grafting on their own.  I shared some of my favorite books and nursery catalogs, and made a strong pitch for the Home Orchard Society, especially for their upcoming Scionwood Fair on March 17th in Canby, Oregon.

I'm still hauling mulch to dump around the trees - trying for 6" to 8" deep starting a foot or more away from the trunk, and going out to the dripline.  On smaller trees I'm working on connecting the trees, just mulching in the whole row.  As our new dojo will be opening April 1st, I only have one month left to move out the piles of mulch in the parking area. 

Now that the ground is no longer frozen, I've also started making metal u-clips out of heavy wire for pinning the wire cages to the ground - over the winter the mulch around them has settled and hungry deer have been knocking over the cages to get at tender twigs.  I've also observed the deer getting up on their hind legs to munch the delectable filbert catkins. Then again, the deer have also been cleaning up the fruit on the ground I had missed under the snow.  It's a give and take with these visitors, but somehow the sight of deer bedded down in the orchard reassures me that it is just wild enough here for them and for me.  

It's already past time to start pruning - and there is A LOT to do!!  I'm on year 2 of my 5-year plan of bringing back the trees into what Masanobu Fukuoka calls "natural shape", and Michael Phillips describes as happy, calm trees.  I estimate I have about 4 weeks to do what spring pruning I am going to get done before I am on to planting out new trees and then thinning fruit.  I will definitely be relying heavily this year on summer pruning!  

 

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Was Hael

A small and warmly dressed group of Avella supporters Was Haeled (wished good health) to the orchard on a cold and windy Sunday January 22nd.  We saluted two standard-sized trees representing the orchard - Dr. Ward's Golden Russet, and the Tollgate Alexander - both local variations on old heirloom trees.  Golden Russet is a late (end of October - early November) cider and eating apple, sugary and flavorful.  Alexander is an early mid-season (September) large drying apple that ripens over many weeks.  Both trees were grafted during Mr. Ryan's tenure, and are among the older trees in the orchard.  The scionwood for the Alexander was obtained from a farmstead somewhere along the Tollgate Road.  We do not know where the scionwood for the Golden Russet is from, except that Dr. Ward, a close friend of Mr. Ryan's, accompanied him on many of his scionwood collecting trips to old homesteads and orchards in the area.  

After wishing the orchard a good year, we used old towels to rub the flaking older bark off the trunks and lower branches of trees in the south side of the orchard.  This removes hiding places for codling moth larvae and pupae, and gives the trees a "massage" to encourage "circulation".  I've read that traditionally birch or willow twigs were used to knock off old bark and encourage sap flow at Was Hael.  
When looking towards old traditions of orchard care, I'm looking for the reason behind the activities - to support the health of the orchard in some way (removing hiding places for the dreaded coddling moths) and to deepen the connection both to the orchard and trees as entities and to the changing seasons.
The next scheduled activity is tossing wood ashes into the branches of the trees for St. Agnes/St. Brigid day (more often referred to as "Groundhog's Day") around Feb. 1st or 2nd.  At this point I'm looking at Sunday Feb. 5th, if it is a sunny day!
In the meantime, it's mulch - mulch - mulch, or as Michael Phillips puts it, "fungal duff management".  Off to the wheelbarrow!