Orchard apricot trees in Spring 2015

I've planted three apricot trees in the orchard, a Royal Rosa, a Moorpark and a Cluthagold.

The Royal Rosal flowered first, at the same time as the older apricot tree.  Unfortunately, while I covered it along with the later flowering trees with frost cloth, a heavy frost occurred on a night when no-one was here to cover it and none of the flowers survived.  Last year one apricot ripened on this tree.

Royal Rosa apricot tree

The Moorpark is the next oldest orchard planting.  Flowering later than the Royal Rosa the nightly coverings of frost cloth started in time, and it has the most young green apricots on it.

Moorpark apricot tree

Lastly, is the Cluthagold tree which was planted within the last year.  It also has a decent number of young green apricots on it, considering.

Cluthagold apricot tree

All the grass has been cleared from around the apricot trees and a layer of mulch put down.  People say (like robots) that the reason for any problem is the grass is not having been cleared from around the trees, but lets look at the facts.

1. If the grass is cleared from around the trees, the lack of rain dries out the soil and cracks the ground.
2. When the long grass is cleared from around the trees, the trunk is often wet despite lack of watering or rain.  Likely from the dew.

To me, the belief that the grass is bad seems to be a religious one.  I think it does more help than harm.  I'd put a photo of some of the cracked ground here, but it just rained this morning for the first time in ages and it won't look as convincing as it would if I had taken a picture yesterday or a day from now.

The old apricot tree in Spring 2015

At time of purchase, this property had one old diseased apricot tree, a walnut tree and a black boy peach.

This tree below is an unknown variety of apricot, and to the left of it out of frame is the walnut tree.  The walnut tree has fruited well every year, and in the cupboard I've both jars of walnut in form suitable for cake decoration and also pickled in malt vinegar.  The apricot however, was rather lacklustre and provided about five albeit tasty fruit last year.  In the photo below it can be see seen flowering, it flowered early and suffered little effect from the weeks of frosts which followed.

The next picture is three weeks on, and while it's hard to make them out, it is covered in young green apricots.

Here's the tree four weeks on, note that behind it to the right is a sycamore tree.  This is the only real place I've seen bees this Spring and even then only yesterday.  Seriously.  I've been out in the paddock daily looking around, and while there might be the odd bumblebee, mostly it's flies that seem to be pollinating the flowers.

This is a close up of the tree at four weeks on.

And another.

This year is looking good for apricots.

Weather

This is a picture from the first bout of heavy wind, now over a month and a half old. That knocked out the power for a day or so, where I live. It also left a local bridge that I use blocked, requiring me to do a long detour.

Pretty much every day, these days, has some strong wind. But about two weeks ago, there was another bout of bad weather. It started by in the space of ten minutes going from a sunny day, to dark and windy, to heavy hail, and finally back to a sunny day. I was by my garage shovelling potting mix and planting new seeds in new seed trays, so had to hurry to put some protection over my existing seed trays.

The front lawn. The peach tree near the center of the photo, which had minor blossom on it, didn't get too badly damaged. It currently has lots of fuzzy buds on it.

The eucalyptus tree part of the front lawn (Sunday).

The eucalyptus tree part of the front lawn (Monday). This is after the second bout of wind.

There's an old apricot tree by my raised beds. I didn't think there were many budding fruit on it as it was, but after the wind, there are now even less.

The power went off early in the morning, so I decided to drive into town and take care of some business. Unfortunately, my preferred route was blocked.

My second preferred route was also blocked.

And more power lines were down.

Thankfully the power came back on shortly before I actually left for town, and although it went off for several hours later in the afternoon, it's been on since. The eucalyptus tree blocks the winter morning sun, and it's not near enough to anything other than shrubs, to do much damage if more pieces fall off. Here's hoping for no more power cuts.

Cider apple tree delivery

Most of my plant purchases are what I consider investments. I don't expect to be able to do anything with them in the near future, but the fact that they are in the ground means that eventually they'll be ready to do something with. And sooner, for being in the ground this winter, in the case of bare root trees.

This order was from Thunder Mountain Nursery in the north island. It was driven by an interest in having cider apple trees, so that's what most of them are.  I don't know if I've posted these particular details, so I'll cover it here.  They tend to arrive bundled together.

In this case, the order was:

• Kingston black cider apple tree.
• Brown's Eater cider apple tree.
• Lady Finger Cider cider apple tree.
• Yarlington Mill cider apple tree.
• Italian Prune plum tree.

There was some logic applied in the choice of cider apple trees.  At some point I read that you need a variety of different trees, so that you can blend the apples.  So maybe one is sweet, another bittersweet, another bitter.. whatever.

As delivered.

In the bag, the roots are I assume kept moist by either sphagnum moss or straw.  And it was straw in this case.

Straw packing.

Here's a look with the trees taken out.

Unpacked.

My current process is to fill buckets with diluted seaweed extract, and to soak the trees for 24 hours before planting.  But I've only recently become more disciplined in how I do this, and so I didn't do it for these.

Here is the planted row.  My evolved square edging is now my standard approach.  One problem with it, is that the grass tends to grow back.  I need to start sheet mulching, and I'd like to widen the edged space but there is one main problem with that.  The problem is that this is a slope coming downhill in my direction, as seen in this photograph.  So a wider edged area will allow the water to spread more.

The planted row.

At this point, I am dreading all the apples I am going to have.  Even the idea of feeding them to the horses next door is starting to become appealing.

Mystery trees

On my property, there are two relatively new trees that I think are fruit trees.

This tree looks very similar to dwarf peach trees that you can see in the nursery sections of local stores.  I don't think I've seen dwarf nectarines, so it's probably a pretty safe bet.

Dwarf peach tree?

The leaves on this tree looked like the leaves I've seen on nectarine trees.  I'll have to wait and see.  But really, if they were the same leaves, from what I understand it could be nectarine or peach as they are both the same family.

Nectarine or peach?