This week end we went up to start winterizing the orchard.
We rototill around each tree, rake the soil back. Then fasten tree guards around each tree so the burrowing under the snow critters like voles, moles and mice will not strip and eat sweet bark of the fruit trees. I use tie wire but you do this on 80 some trees your fingers and hands are stating to get a little marked up and sore. Come spring we remove them as we have had some galling. The metal tree guard work very well for us.
Ellen she comes along and fertilizes the trees with a local brewed liquid that is concentrated. We mix it one cup to one gallon and one gallon per inch at four foot. We do this twice a year. It does seem to work. We get very little wild growth from the shoots in the spring rather the limbs seem to be bulking very well and growth is very lush. Then she waters it in.
Finished tree. We will come back in a month and tie limbs to prevent damage from snow and winter winds.
This year our Snow Sweets were in the ground three years! So we left a few blossoms, next year we will leave a few more.
Honey Crisps and Galas next year will have a few apples. As will the nectarines and peaches.
Quote from: Redoverfarm on October 22, 2011, 12:49:29 PM
Rick we have more trouble with deer browsing when the snow is on and horning the trees when the bucks rub their velvet off. Good Luck on the trees this winter.
Thanks John we will take all the luck we can get with these fruit trees. This is a heavy snow region and the deer migrate out as soon as it starts to fall. We did have about thirty head of elk winter close in there two winters ago. But they never encroached the fence. Less pressure from the wolves that close to humans. There is a full time home about a half mile away, above the orchard.
Here they are all mule deer and they are hardly territoriality. They range over a huge area. We however do have the Idaho Fish and Game required 8 foot netting or field fence all the way around. We have never had a deer track in there yet. We did have some heavy buck tracks up by the fifthwheel the other day. ::) ::) And we were not there.
The trees really get a work out when those bucks start rubbing there velvet off don't they!
Rick and Ellen's Ranch Orchard
Yesterday we had to arrange for hospice care for my dad. He had had fallen recently and broken his sternum and his weight was trailing off. So goes 96 year old. After the paper work was done. We got away to the ranch in the afternoon with a lot to get done.
When we got up there we found a real cold snap had hit us hard. The drip irrigation system controller and manifold had froze and the manifold had broken. Something on the pressure tank housed in our garden shed broke and the floor inside the shed was all wet. I could not find where that was coming from. We drained and rolled up hoses.
I could not get the union from the big tank to the jet pump broke apart. So I had to go borrow a size huge pair of channel locks. Neighbor told me that it had been two nights of 15 or 16 degree weather.
Shed and tank are level! I am leaning or the camera was challenged. This is where the tank and jet pump for the orchard is at. I got that all unhooked and the jet pump off its mount and loaded on the pick up to come out. The 2 inch line there had a large chunk of ice. We loaded up a load of fire wood to bring out. Ellen went to the fifth-wheel to fix something for us to eat. It had not froze thank God! After I ate I went to winterize that and found out the new water heater drain plug is 1 1/8 and the socket set I had with me did not go that big. So off to the neighbors again. It was dark when I got the pressure tank drained and the well pump shut off.
It was dark thirty by the time I got his socket back to the neighbor and we still had to drive out. Home by 22:30 may be 23:00 YAHH! Wow I will be glad to retire and move up there and kill this drive time thing.
Neighbor was not in a good mood. His truck with the self log loader, the steering assist on his old Peterbuilt had went out on him $600 +. He had broken the front rear end on his transport truck an old Kenworth and they we scouring the country to find one that matched up. So he was like a caged lion that is sort of hamstrung.
Nice looking orchard!
Rick, I am sorry about your dad. But it is nice to hear that he's hit 96! Hoping we all get the best part of a century. Love 'em while you got 'em.
Cold at my ranch too. I am buttoned up for the winter, but I am hoping to make it up one more time.
Man I got a lot of respect for farmers and ranchers. Amongst a myriad of obvious talents and tenacity you need to have, you better be a pretty good mechanic, plumber, electrician, and carpenter.
Hats off to ya Rick, Frank, and all you red blooded Americans that are dependent on Mother Earth and resistant to all her decorative elements for success....and some work elsewhere just to keep it goin'.....
I?m headin? to the fridge and stove right now as a salute.
??..just doin? my part??..
BTW, your dad sounds AWESOME!