Off with Bigfoot

I had planted a nicely shaped apple tree that I had gotten from Star Nursery when we first moved into our home. I got a dwarf red delicious, and this was one of the first trees in the yard. It was before my fruit tree awareness... 

I saw the other trees that were available and at the time and it was limited on the variety, and pretty much the word out was that Anna did well here, and there were Annas for sale, but they were rough looking and I said well if it doesn't do well it would be pretty as an ornamental. My have I changed!

It was a very pretty tree, but it never really did fruit, alternating between a dozen to 2 dozen apples, and I considered it a fluke and wanted to remove it and start over with a different variety, but my husband was always complained saying it WAS a lovely ornamental, and by that time, whenever I was talking gardening with anyone, we would get on the subject of fruit trees and I would have this tree that was in name only which is no way to have an orchard.

It was the same with the bonanza peach on the dwarfing rootstock, the fruit was not that great, and I had removed that tree the year before, except the apple tree was much bigger!

Okay, so my husband goes away on a bigfoot hunting trip, and while he was gone I removed the apple tree, and I decided that I would plant the 2 1/2 foot tall Pink Lady sapling that had been damaged by a light saber. He was a little dismayed, but I have to keep busy while he is gone.....

It was so freeing to chop that tree down, and then there is the saying that you are not to plant the same tree in the hole of one that was there before, but I decided to go ahead and plant the Pink Lady there and see how it turns out!

Now here is a picture of where it was before. It was in the corner so in this picture it is on the far left. The branches were terminating out below where it was damaged. My experience with the last apple tree was that these branches really had a tendency to lay down and spread out, and I did  not want the tree to be that large in spread, so by cutting all of the lower branches off, I was able to force sprouts higher up on the trunk.

 So here is the Pink Lady in it's new home a year after it was damaged. It has 4 terminating branches and the shape looks good so far!

Brought To Your Knees

Well a lot has occurred about the fruit trees since the last post.

Startlingly, I went outside and my Pink Lady apple was folded over in half, and the top half was dangling and midway was a spot on the trunk where all I can imagine happened is that it had been whapped with a stick in the midsection, and the shock of the impact had scarred the entire core and outer bark, because it was like looking at a section of cork instead of a thin branch trunk of a tree.

We had had company, and one of the girls was running around with a light saber, and I imagine she whapped the tree and it took a couple of months to die, and I tried to save some of the branches to start some pink lady trees by propagating them and they survived the winter, until early spring, but I tossed them, because they really do need to be on a root stock to uptake nutrients in the desert, and to offer whatever the benefits the rootstock provides. So I tossed them. I realized I could only give them to someone as a flowering pollinator, and I decided against even having that conversation.

But what it speaks on is the ability to propagate fruit tree cuttings...

Also what it speaks on is that there is a 2 foot sapling without any branching form.

It was a shocker. To order the tree from the orchard up in North Las Vegas, plant it and have it for a whole year, you are so excited to see how big they are getting, an are so hopeful, then brought to your knees!

What to do?

Over the Wall

Husband and I went to visit someone and happened to notice fruit trees lining the side of someone's house. It was nice to be in the passenger seat for the ride and notice the different familiar leaves.

 From the looks of it it seems that the first tree is a pomegranate, then maybe a
citrus as they can really get light green, then a apple, then a peach, then a fig.....

Then an apple, another fig, another pomegranate.....
 

 



Then what looks like possibly an asian pear... I just got one and it is similar. Look at the leaves they are so round....

 

I thought you might appreciate the orchard that they have growing on the side of their home that from the looks of it is less then 8 feet wide. (Most of the side yards are 6 feet wide.)

There is always plenty of room for fruit trees!

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!




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.