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.

First day of Spring

It has been raining or drizzling for the past couple of days.  Today, we get the first of the Spring snows.  It's snowing pretty decently outside at the moment and has been for the last half hour - hopefully the ground is saturated enough that it melts as it falls.