Red Baron and the Pink Lady

I got back home from picking up the fruit trees at the orchard. They were ordered back in November. I didn't get one variety although it still might come in and so they might still contact me. It was the asian pear that is to go in the center of the yard.

Here you can see the flags that marked the locations for the trees to be planted.

 

 

 

Once you determine the depth of the hole for the tree, you do have to orient the tree so that the graft is on the shady side, so that it will not get sun scald. You can barely make out the graft but you can see that it is in the shadow at midday. In this photo it is on the north side of the trunk.

Also, you do have to bury it the right depth. That is done by determining what is trunk and what is root. There is a division there and you do not want to over bury the trunk. You want the demarkation between trunk and root to just be under the soil level when planted. You want the roots protected of course. Another thing is that if you use compost and dig a deep hole, the microorganisms will come in and eat all of the cellulose out of the compost, and the tree will drop into the hole. You determine how deep to dig the hole just enough to get the depth right so that the trunk/root division is just under the soil level. That way the tree wont fall into the hole.

So here is the finished photograph. This is the new Red Baron peach (left) and the Pink Lady apple.

 

And here is a photo so you can see where they are in relation to the yard.

That's all the planting for today!

The Trees Have Arrived

The trees were to arrive any day. I had those landscape flags that you use to mark areas, and I stuck them into the spots where the trees were to go and reworked a couple of the irrigation lines to the tree areas.

I received the call and headed out to the Master gardener's orchard in North Las Vegas. I saw alot of trees in bloom and I also was amazed at the forms, the shapes created by the pruning that had occured weeks earlier to get the orchard into shape for spring.

Here are photos of the orchard!

Now the one below I am interested in because it is a Red Baron Peach. That is one of the varieties that I ordered, and instead of being blown away by the beauty and the forms, I am now reading the tags that are at the base of each tree.

This is a Fuji persimmon.

 

This is a Sweet pomegranate.

 

 

This is an Tsu Li asian pear. (In all these instances it is the photo following.)

 

This is a grouping within the rows of Pink Lady Apples. 

 

There are rows and rows of fruit tree varieties at the orchard!

 

It was nice to get in the middle of them to understand the pruning forms they were trying to acheive.

 

I loaded up my trees and I was off to go plant them right away, as they are received bare root! 





Staging Area for Tree Drop

I had wanted to add additional fruit trees to the garden. I had a bonanza peach that I had gotten when we first moved into our home. It was a dwarf tree, and it lived on the patio in a pot the first year. I finally decided to plant it into the ground and for nine years we had that dwarf bonanza peach and it was pretty, the flowers were awesome, but the fruit were pale in color, the flesh white-greenish, they were small and they were acrid. The had a slight tart sting to the tongue. So you think 'they are not getting what they need', maybe it is the lack of sun....

They were not picked too early, because you first notice them, ripened, when they are lying on the ground. The tree had a full lush canopy of leaves. The fruit were well hidden. That is why we had the tree so long. It looked so healthy.

Then you hear stories of peaches growing here in Las Vegas that are delicious, then you happen to taste one, and that is it! That dwarf peach has got to go. So I cut it down and dug up the root. I want you to understand what this entailed, so here is a photo of the tree.

 

As you can see from this photo it stood about 7 feet tall. It seemed like a big decision, and my husband wasn't too happy about it, but it was awkward to say I had a peach tree that you couldn't eat the peaches. I wanted a peach tree where you could eat the peaches, not an ornamental, althought it sure was pretty!

 

After it was gone, then I drew up a design of the backyard so that I could incorporate more fruit trees into the backyard space. 

  

                                      

 

Then I ordered fruit trees from the local master gardeners fruit tree order they put together in the fall. 

 

In the photo you can see the persimmon in the area in the top center on the right. It grew from two seeds that I had planted from a fruit I had gotten from the orchard when I worked as a master gardener a few years earlier.  I am no longer a master gardener. You could consider me a retired master gardener.

 

Well the two seeds that I had planted had both sprouted and were 3 feet tall. I had to cut one off at the base because they were not able to be transplanted and I couldn't keep two. I researched it and it did say they have a very long tap root, and if you cut the tap root that it will not survive, and as we live in a very rocky location, removing one of them by cutting it off was my only option.  Here is a photo of the two persimmons.

 

So that is what I did. I only have one now and it is going to be interesting to watch it grow and I will have to determine how to manage it because it is very close, as in extremely close to the pomegranate tree.

So with all of this, I waited for the fruit trees that I had ordered to arrive!




Spring Snapshot

There fruit trees are in bloom! This is the plum.

 

Here is a shot of the garden from the patio. Here you can see the garden in bloom in spring!

 

The above photo shows the apricot in bloom on the left, and the plum on the right. Do you notice the kumquats? That is a bay laurel in the left foreground.

 



Pruning in the Spring

I prune my fruit trees each year in January.

After I got them I made pruning cuts and that is a post subject in and of itself! What does annual pruning do to a tree's form? You can look at a tree that has been consecutively pruned and see the effect of the yearly pruning on it's form. Pretty much the lower branching that these trees have is because they were pruned. It causes the branching to form lower then normal and can overall reduce the tree height.

You can see I just brought the height down about a foot and a half.  I left the branches about 5 inches or so above the last years cut.  I also cut a few branches off as this tree is getting pretty big, and  some that were growing horizontally had to be removed.



Here is the shape of the apricot. It is a Blenheim apricot.

Here is the photo of the Burgundy plum. I think this is a before photo, and I would take off some of the tips that exceed the overall height just to shape this a little bit on the top. Here you get an overall picture of it's shape. It started out extremely vertical. I was concerned that the growth was so close together that I cut a couple of the interior braches which would open the center up.  As the tree is maturing it is spreading on it's own and this is because of the weight of the fruit.

 



Each year it is getting easier and easier to prune the trees because the growth is not as robust as in previous years when they were new.

 

I will have to dig around and see if I can find pictures of the apricot tree when it was newly planted and post those photos to show it through the years until now. That should shed some light on the effects of annual pruning on the overall shape of a tree.

 

 

Four Years Ago Today

Four years ago today I planted the kumquats in the backyard. They flank either side of the sidewalk to the hottub.  The overall design of my backyard is not symetrical and this gave me the chance to add a little planted symetry.

You can see the difference in the size of the kumquat trees in looking at the two photographs. 

 

Also other fruit trees to note.  In the far left corner is the burgundy plum. It might have just gone in, or possible the season before. There is a big difference is size. Also the apple tree which is behind the brown rose arbor behind the pillar. The apple has really opened up and gotten a lot taller. This is what four years growth looks like but you also have to remember that I keep them in a "backyard orchard" size by annual pruning.

 

I just pruned all of the fruit trees. I think that will be my next post. 

Oranges on a Whim

I was driving along and spotted this orange tree and had to stop and take a picture.

Seeing oranges growing in the valley is rare. 

There was alway the concern about the need of citrus to be protected by being planted in certain areas of the yard, thereby creating a micro climate that would keep the tree from freezing. The orange tree is up against the house in a corner created by the garage. The morning sun hits the face of the house and warms that corner as the house is facing due east. (the garage is on the north of the lot.)

 I hope to have my camera with me next time I spot a fruit tree so that I don't have to use cell phone photos in the future.

 

There are obvious concerns about the care of the tree. The place looks neglected, and that  is only because they don't have the mentality of a gardener. 

 

I learned from attending master gardening instruction that the lower branches that come from the trunk that typically are removed for asthetics, increase the girth of the trunks from their photosynthesis of the leaves, and they offer protection from the sun.  I am mentioning this because the first thing that I would do would be to trim off the dead branches and clear away the lower trunk growth.  Since it is probably suffering from watering issues (gardener's assumption based on the state of the yard) the leaves probably helped it's overall condition. But it does make you consider the amount of water that they do need! Something to consider.

 

Look at how tall it is! Wouldn't you love to have one!