Your Small Kitchen Garden is for people who grow--or who want to grow--their own food, though in limited space. We explore how to grow vegetables and fruit with emphasis on expending little effort and energy. Please come share with us in our lazy garden.
In a few days, this pod will plump up and provide, apparently, five peas for the pot. It’ll take several dozen similar pods to produce enough peas for a meal.
Do you want to grow peas in your small kitchen garden? It’s a tough question. Peas require a lot of space for a modest harvest. On the other hand, garden fresh peas taste astonishingly better than any other peas you’ll ever eat. If your kitchen garden is space-challenged, there are so many other vegetables that will produce more in the same space as peas.
That said, I plant peas every year. In fact, I dedicate a significant chunk of garden space to peas—about a third of my planting space. But that’s not as big a liability as it seems because pea plants don’t live long. They prefer cool weather and tend to die off as days get hot. I usually remove my pea plants in June, and plant the same area with other vegetables—most often, squash.
Don’t Rush to Plant Peas
If you buy pea seed in one of those envelopes from a seed display in a store, read the package! They can’t print much on those envelopes, so what they do print is probably useful.
One thing you’ll learn is that you can plant peas as soon as the soil thaws in your garden bed. You can, but there’s no need to rush. Peas will sprout when the soil temperature is around 40F degrees, but they won’t grow much until the temperature increases. Give your soil a chance to dry out a bit and warm up. Except in very warm years, peas that I plant in mid-March in hardiness zone 5/6 might mature a week earlier than peas I plant in mid-April… so I try to find other gardening tasks for March such as pruning and grafting in my fruit trees.
Prepare to Plant Peas
When it’s time to plant peas, you must first prepare the soil. Depending on your planting bed, this may be a monumental task, or it may be a non-issue. In my slightly raised-bed layout, I need to walk in the garden bed to be able to till, plant, weed, and harvest. This means that each spring I’m dealing with compacted soil; my vegetables, I know, will be happier growing in loose soil. I feel compelled to loosen the soil before I plant.
The pea plants in this row have just produced their first flowers. I set peas so close together that they grow into a hedge. Notice that the pea trellis runs down the middle of the row – which is actually two rows of plants spaced about six inches apart.
When your planting beds are narrow enough that you can work them without walking in them, the soil remains loose from year-to-year; you can be a “no-till” gardener.
My last three posts discussed soil preparation for various types of planting beds. Whichever style and approach you use, this discussion about planting peas starts where those posts end: I’m assuming you’ve prepared your soil for planting, and you’re ready to put seeds in the ground.
Space Considerations
Peas grow on vines. Pea stems are slender and can support very little weight. So, as the plant gets taller, it extends tendrils that curl around whatever they touch and support the plant. In my experience even “bush” varieties of peas are vines… they just happen to be shorter than typical pea vines.
When you plant peas, it’s important to provide a trellis. This can be a garden fence, a roll of chicken wire stretched above the planting area, strands of twine hanging from above… whatever suits your fancy.
Pea plants I’ve grown reach about six feet before they wilt in the heat of late spring. I built pea trellises that provide support for about 4 and a half feet, so the tops of the plants sometimes topple under their own weight when they grow above the trellises. Before I’d made trellises, I tried bush peas. The package promised 18-inch plants, and I got 24-in plants. Thinking bush I hadn’t provided a trellis, so the plants lay on top of each other. I plant peas densely, so there was a heavy load of plants that trapped a lot of moisture; the plants on the bottom rotted.
The point of the story is that even if you find a short variety of peas, you should provide something for the vines to climb.
Pick Your Pea Variety
I’ve noticed only three significant differences between pea varieties: size of plants, palatability of the pods, and wilt-resistance. We talked about the sizes of plants.
Palatability of pods—if you’re growing peas, the pods don’t matter. You’ll find varieties that claim more peas per pod than others, and you’ll find varieties that claim you can eat the pods, or let the pods mature and then eat the peas. And, of course, you can find snow peas—varieties intended to grow pods but don’t even think of letting them fill with peas.
Wilt-resistance—Pea plants don’t like heat. When they experience several sequential days of temperatures in the 80s and above, their leaves curl and their tendrils shrivel. If the temperatures hold, the plants die. Wilted plants will recover if the temperatures falls, but a mid-spring heat wave can seriously decrease your pea yields.
There are wilt-resistant peas that handle hot days far better than other varieties. Which brings us back to when to plant.
This pea pod sat for a month too long in the produce drawer of my refrigerator. All the peas in it sprouted, despite the refrigerator’s temperature being close to 40F degrees.
When to Plant Peas
You can plant peas as soon as the soil thaws. Peas will start growing in soil that’s above 40F degrees. I’ve had peas sprout in the produce drawer of my refrigerator which runs right around 40 degrees.
If you choose to plant that early, plant the peas deep. I learned this season that I tend not to plant peas deep enough. I planted in late March, and peas I’d left shallow softened up and then froze during a sequence of crazy cold nights. 10-15% of my seeds failed. (That same freeze would probably not have harmed pea plants had any already emerged above the soil… pea plants don’t mind nippy, frosty nights.) In most years, I’ve planted in mid May, and even peas that ended up on the surface because of my carelessness rooted and grew.
So, as I said: if you plant early, plant deep. I suspect my peas would have been fine had I set the seeds ¾ inch underground.
How do I get away with planting peas in mid-May? I buy a variety called Wando. These are amazingly wilt-resistant, and I’ve seen them suffer only in one very hot spring out of about a dozen.
Here’s my recommendation for when to plant peas in your small kitchen garden: Sow directly in the ground from two to four weeks before the last frost date.
How Many Peas to Plant?
A single pea vine may produce a modest single serving of peas. But you won’t get those peas all at once. Rather, as the vine reaches about 12 inches, flowers emerge. The vine continues to grow, and those flowers produce pea pods. As the first pods develop, more flowers emerge higher up on the now taller vine. This sequence continues… but you must pick the fully-developed pods as they become ready or the plant will stop making new ones. Once the vine starts producing peas, it may develop two-to-five pods every three-to-five days. So, you might harvest twenty, thirty, or forty pods from a single plant… but when you harvest the last pod, peas from the first one will be thirty days old.
A pea flower in the dew has inspired many a poet and playwright. OK, I made that up. But pea flowers are delicate and exotic: beautiful harbingers of the coming harvest.
All that to say: you need several pea plants to grow enough peas for a particular meal. My experiences may help you decide how many.
I plant 4 ounces of seed in three doubled rows totaling 42 feet. (I crowd my peas, as you’ll see in my next installment on this topic.) My family of five eats peas at two or three meals a week, and I still freeze around two gallons of peas to eat during the off season. I did some noodling about this some weeks ago and concluded that I harvest about one gallon of peas from every seven feet of doubled rows. Or, for every ounce of seeds I plant, I harvest between five and six quarts of peas.
I’ve never formally kept track, and different varieties of peas, different soil conditions, weather, and garden pests will all affect yield. So, the best honest advice I can provide: plant at least enough peas to assure you’ll have a meal’s worth when you do harvest.
How to Plant Peas
My next post will explain how I plant peas. My approach is a bit unorthodox, squeezing way more plants into my small kitchen garden than the package suggests. You’ll do fine to follow instructions on the pea seed package, or read my next post and get a look at extreme pea culture.
There wasn’t much “structure” to the root systems of my young fruit trees when I planted them in the fall. They’ll need plenty of water as they come out of dormancy this spring.
I’m poised to plant my small kitchen garden, having finished late-winter pruning and grafting in my fruit trees. I’m poised, but holding. March teased early with some very warm days, but then plunged into barely-tolerable cold.
The soil has thawed, so a more rugged gardener could have planted peas, lettuce, spinach, and other cold weather crops by now. I tend to wait until April for those, and sometimes am simply too busy to plant them until late April. But this year there’s something else that’s very important for me to do in my garden: water young perennials.
Fall Planting Time Bombs
Back in mid-Autumn, I argued in this blog that you should plant fruit trees in the fall (this goes for most perennials, but if they’re not going to feed you, don’t waste your energy planting them). I shared my experiences of trying to find fruit trees at local nurseries, I explained that I ended up buying via mail-order, and I showed how I planted my young trees in mid-November.
Among the advantages I listed for planting perennials in autumn: you don’t have to water, and you can omit fertilizer. Dormant plants aren’t demanding.
Come spring, those young perennials emerge from dormancy and require the creature comforts you denied them in the fall. If you had plenty of rain or snow over the winter, your soil will thaw and be moist; your perennials will be happy. However, if your neighborhood is emerging from a dry winter, your perennials may awaken to desert-like conditions. This is especially bad for the young ones.
What’s more, even if your ground thaws wet, you need to make sure the young plants don’t dry out along with the soil. Unless you’re experiencing substantial seasonal rainfall—or massive snow melt—you should start watering when the ground thaws.
How Much Water?
In early spring, water deeply once or twice a week (again, don’t water if Mother Nature is doing a good job of it). As plants (any plants—not just the perennials you planted in autumn) emerge from dormancy (you see leaf buds plump up), increase your watering to once daily unless the soil is obviously saturated.
When you plant perennials, you should soak them till the soil can’t hold more water. This helps you work out air pockets and get the soil up against young roots. Subsequent watering needn’t saturate the soil. Your goal is to keep everything damp, not to maintain a mud pit around your tree.
When leaves emerge and you see vigorous growth, cut back the water to two or three times a week, and keep it up until fall. Skip watering if there’s a decent rainstorm.
Especially if you planted bare root trees in the fall, they need a lot of moisture in their first year to help them develop strong root systems. But temper daily watering: the point of planting in autumn was to reduce the amount of water you had to provide. Especially in March and April, the soil may stay wet for several days between watering.
Fertilizer?
It’s good to provide fertilizer as your young fall plantings wake up in the spring. Best of all, mulch with compost (but don’t let the compost rest against the plant). If that’s not an option, provide a light feed of 10-10-10 chemical fertilizer.
For my older fruit trees, I’d always driven holes in the ground with a crow bar, and then filled the holes with fertilizer. A friend who runs an orchard told me he prefers to broadcast fertilizers on the surface and let them dissolve into the soil. For young trees, just dust fertilizer on the loose soil around the tree trunk—a small handful at most. With all the watering, it’ll soak in quickly.
A makeshift bucket of twigs cut from pruned branches hangs in the green apple tree I’m converting into a red apple tree.
For the past many posts, Your Small Kitchen Garden has focused on grafting and pruning apple trees. Two posts back, we looked at equipment I use to graft red apple stock onto my green apple tree—and I introduced a video that shows me assembling a graft. In the last post, I listed guidelines I follow as I choose which branches will host scions in the green apple tree. This post provides written, step-by-step instructions for assembling a graft. Though I’m talking about apple trees, this technique will work on just about any deciduous fruit tree.
I’ll assume that you’ve been pruning apple trees and have several branches from which to harvest grafting stock. Make scions from last year’s growth. Last year’s growth is at the ends of the smallest branches. Last year was very dry here, so branches grew only three or four inches beyond the previous year’s growth. In wet years, my apple branches have grown a foot or more. In any case, cut and save a dozen or so twelve-inch twigs off the ends of your pruned branches, and put these in a bucket you can hang from a branch.
If there are no fruiting spurs on the section of branch you harvest, you’re probably looking at last year’s growth. If you can spot a scaly ring in the bark, it most likely marks where the terminal bud spent last winter; everything after it should be last year’s growth.
Haul the twig bucket, a gear bucket, and a pruning saw up in the tree and perch so you can easily get both hands on the host branch without falling out of the tree. I like to work on a step ladder which provides a steady base and reduces my need to climb the tree. Standing on branches erodes the bark, and increases my chances of damaging small twigs and existing grafts.
7 Steps of Grafting Apple Trees
Cut the host branch—Make as clean a cut as you can, perpendicular to the branch. Leave a stump just two or three inches long. For very thin branches (a half inch is about the thinnest it’s practical to graft onto), I might use bypass pruners or loppers, but in most cases I use a fine-toothed saw so as not to crush the branch or its bark. With a saw, cut about three quarters of the way through from one side, then remove the saw from the cut, flip it, and finish the cut from the other side. I’ve seen better pruning saws than I own cut cleanly through a branch in a few strokes without a back cut… the quality of your tools will influence your technique.
Split the host branch—Use a sharp knife, align the blade across the center of the stump, and gently rock it while pressing it into the cut end. I try to split along a line that’s perpendicular to the trunk branch from which the stump grows. For a narrow stump, make the split about and inch long. For a heavier stump, it might take a three-inch split to provide enough play to get scions into the crack.
I liked this small branch as the host for a graft; it had a gaping hole in the bark that I was able to remove, and set a graft just blow it. The bypass pruners deformed the stump a little, but I’m confident the graft will take anyway. Notice that I split the stump across the limb to which it’s attached.
Make a scion—Whittle a scion from the harvested grafting stock. Start at a leaf bud three-to-seven inches from the terminal bud of a twig. Whittle a wedge starting at that leaf bud and getting narrower toward the bottom of the scion. The wedge—from leaf bud to the end of the scion—should be about a half inch long (see photos).
Start whittling on one side of a leaf bud, but make sure you leave the bud intact. A finished scion tapers for about a half to three quarters of an inch from the bottom leaf bud down to a chisel point. The leaf bud will sit about even with the end of the stump and will point out from the side of the stump.
Insert the scion into the stump—Spring the crack open and work the whittled wedge into one side of it. The leaf bud at the top of the wedge should point out, and end up aligned with the top of the stump. I use the point of my utility knife to spring the stump open. If you do this, be cautious; when you flex it too much, the knife blade will break. For thicker host branches, I sometimes use a screwdriver to hold the crack open as I insert scions (explained in my last post, Strategies for Grafting Fruit Trees). Make sure the edges of the bark of the scion align with the edges of the bark along the crack in the host stump.
I use the tip of my utility knife to flex the stump open as I insert the first scion into the crack. The first scion usually holds the stump open enough that I can easily insert the second scion. Aligning the bark at this point is crucial.
Add a second scion—Whittle a scion to match the first one and work it into the other end of the crack in the host stump. Chances are, you won’t need to flex the crack open this time as the first scion will hold it wide enough for the second scion to fit. You may need to readjust both scions several times to make sure their bark aligns with the host stump’s bark.
Wrap the graft—I once bought and messed with grafting tape, but didn’t have any luck with it. However, while creating this series on grafting, I learned that you can coat a new graft with wax, then wrap it with grafting tape to protect it from the elements. This requires heating the wax which seems inconvenient, especially on a cold day… but I’ve never tried it, so don’t let my inexperience keep you from finding a better approach.
I use cotton twine and tree wound dressing. Tie the twine around the stump at the bottom of the crack (I use a clove hitch, but any knot will do). Then, wrap the twine around the stump, working toward the leaf buds on the scions, and laying each successive loop of twine tightly against the preceding loop. Get the last loop of twine as close to the end of the stump as you can without running it up onto the leaf buds of the scions. Finish it off by running the end of the twine through a loop, pulling it tight, and cutting off excess twine.
I tie a clove hitch at the bottom of the split, then catch the end of the twine in the first loop or two as I work my way up the stump.
Waterproof the wrap—Use a water-based tree wound dressing, and coat the cotton twine wrapping. Also, dab tree wound dressing on the end of the stump so no wood shows through. It’s ok if dressing runs into the crack and coats the bottom leaf buds on the scions; make sure you coat all the twine and the stump’s split end.
I use a water-based sealant called Treekote tree wound dressing made byWalter E Clark & Son in Orange, Connecticut. Don’t use the stuff to dress wounds left by pruning, but waterproof your graft with it to keep things from drying out while the scions knit themsleves to the host stump.
When Your Fruit Tree Grafts are Done
A successful graft wakes up more slowly than the rest of your small kitchen garden. There may be leaves on the rest of the tree for a month or longer before your scions show signs of life. Usually, the first change appears in a scion’s terminal bud; if that opens up, the graft has taken and is likely to knit up with the stump.
Once leaves emerge, remove the protective wrap from the stump. I use the razor-sharp utility knife to slice part way through the coils of twine without going as deep as the bark. This cuts through the loop of twine I tucked under at the end of the wrap and I can unravel the whole wrap from there. Unwrap gently. Sometimes the twine sticks to the tender bark; if you work slowly, you can unstick it without doing too much damage.
You’re looking at scions set in the split stump of a small branch that conveniently sprouted two seasons ago. This graft points into a space that could really use a low branch. Notice the leaf buds where the scions meet the stump. The most rapid growth occurs around leaf buds, so the design of the graft encourages the scion to grow into the stump.
It’s pruning and grafting time in my small kitchen garden, as it must be for nearly everyone in hardiness zone 6 and lower (north of zone 6). But time is running out. You should stop pruning when the leaf buds on your trees start to plump up in preparation to open, and that usually happens in early April.
My last five posts have been about grafting and pruning. I hope you’ve put the information to use. This post and the next one finish the series. This post presents my thinking about grafting onto an old established tree and the next post talks you through building a graft step-by-step. In my previous post, I described the equipment I use for grafting and introduced a video that takes you through the procedures I follow to graft red apple tree scions onto a green apple tree… so please read that one and watch the video if you want to get started immediately.
Harvesting Stock for Scions
You can harvest grafting stock all winter and store it until you’re ready to work. I harvest stock as I prune in late winter. When I can spend a half hour, I choose a problem to sort out in my red apple tree and take out a limb or two. Then I cut twelve-inch twigs off the ends of the small branches and put a bunch in a makeshift bucket.
If I have a lot of grafting to do, I focus on it almost exclusively until pruning season is drawing to a close. Then I stop grafting and make a mad dash through whatever pruning is left to do.
Graft onto Thin Branches
I like to graft onto very small branches—ones that are about a half inch in diameter. The technique, summarized, goes like this:
Cut off the root branch and leave a stump.
Split the stump across the middle, creating a one-to-three-inch crack.
Whittle a scion and insert it on one end of the split.
Whittle a second scion and insert it in the other end of the split.
Wrap and waterproof the graft to protect it from the elements.
I’ve grafted into branches as wide as two inches across, but a branch that heavy requires one more tool than I usually carry (see box).
Graft to Larger Branches
The grafting technique I use is very easy to duplicate. Other methods require more precise cutting to align scions with root stock. There are special tools available that will cut the end of a scion and a socket on the root stock in which to insert the scion. Using such a tool, you can graft onto branches that are too large to split with a knife.
The technique I teach here works with any branch that you can split across the center with a knife. I’ve had luck with branches up to about 1.5 inches. The technique of cutting off the branch and then splitting it applies as well to these larger branches as to smaller ones. However, when you’re ready to insert scions, a utility knife is too flimsy to hold open the split on such a thick branch.
To deal with this problem, I put a flat-head screwdriver in my equipment bucket. To open the split, I work the tip of the screwdriver into the center of the branch—pointing straight into the split. I keep the screwdriver as far as I can from the bark ends of the opening, and use it as a lever to pry the branch open as I set scions in place (below).
When grafting into a thick branch—this one is about an inch across—I use a screwdriver to hold the split open as I place scions. Here, the scion isn’t all the way into the crack, but the bark aligns well with the bark of the stump. You can see that the scion will bulge out a little once it’s in position.
I cut a selected branch off square about two inches from where it attaches to the tree. I try to preserve the bark at the cut, so I use a fine-toothed saw for thicker branches, and sharp bypass pruners for thinner branches.
In an old, established tree, there may not be many conveniently-located small branches to receive grafts. This was the case with my ugly green apple tree. Knowing too little about grafting, I jumped in and started scions on large branches in poorly-chosen locations. I’d encourage you, instead, to prune your old problem trees for a season or two before you start grafting in them. Pruning encourages new growth, and in the second year, you’re likely to have many small, young candidate branches on which to graft stock from other trees.
Small Kitchen Garden Guidelines for Grafting
Here, in no particular order, are things I keep in mind as I work to convert my green apple tree into a red apple tree:
After three seasons, this graft is coming together nicely; it will probably produce fruit this season. It’s likely that this winter I’ll graft onto the branch that emerges just below the established graft.
Get the tree under control (if it’s not) by pruning according to the guidelines I presented in Prune Fruit Trees – 3: What and Why. If you’re dealing with a serious problem tree, you might put off grafting for a few seasons as you bring the tree around.
Prune before you graft. As you prune, you may need to climb your tree or at least stand on its branches. Worse, when you cut away old growth, it may fall through the branches. This activity could damage new grafts, so finish the season’s pruning on the host tree before you start grafting on it.
In a big, old tree, do lots of grafts. My grafting technique was poor when I started and I’d have about a 50% success rate. So, by doing 90 grafts in a season, I was confident I’d have 45 survivors. If you do ten grafts along a main branch and they all survive, crowding each other, you can prune some off in subsequent seasons.
Align bark. When I tell you that the bark on a scion must align with the bark in its host stump, I mean that the edges of the bark must align. The curve of the scion is tighter than that of the host stump, so the scion will bulge slightly out of the crack in which you set it.
Graft onto short stumps. Leave as little of the original wood as it practical; this reduces the chances of the host tree putting out competing branches that you’ll need to prune away later.
Graft to fill spaces. Especially on large, old trees, look for branches that come off the bottoms of larger branches, and graft onto those. Prune growth that comes off the tops of branches. This encourages the tree to develop a low profile and keep fruit within reach.
Graft to “repair” damaged branches. Sometimes, you’ll find damage on a branch you’d like to retain. Cutting the branch off behind the damage, and grafting into the shortened branch can save it while converting it to some other variety of growth.
Stay alert! Whatever knife you use for grafting needs to be extremely sharp. Don’t cut toward your body parts with it! Especially when you’re splitting a stump, don’t hold onto the stump or its parent branch. Sometimes the stump opens up and the knife slides through with little resistance. I did most of my grafting with only nine fingers one season because I got careless.
Please Chime In
Leave a note if you try grafting this season or if you have experience grafting your own plants. I’m very interested in sharing other techniques, so if you’ve tried some and want to write about them, get in touch and we can work out a guest post or a collaboration.
A new graft in my apple tree awaits warmer weather. With luck, sap will rise from the host tree into the scions and trigger vigorous growth that comingles cells from two plants, resulting in a single plant.
How about a crazy science experiment that you can do in your small kitchen garden? I’m talking about combining pieces from two organisms into a single organism that continues living and growing as if this were a natural chain of events. Make a chimera: graft fruit trees.
Grafting fruit trees is the most exotic, satisfying gardening I’ve ever done. It has extended the life of a useless tree, and nearly doubled the apples I harvest each fall.
Why I Graft
My small kitchen garden boasts six mature fruit trees: three apple, one pear, and one peach tree that came with the house, and a second peach tree we planted when the original fell over several years ago (the fallen tree still produces a good crop of peaches each summer). One of my apple trees produces delightful red apples that are great for eating and for cooking. Another produces red apples that are crisp and flavorless, though they always look great. The third tree produces green blemished, scabby apples that are mostly water and have no flavor.
Last winter’s graft looks messy, though I did remove one scion after they both started growing. As sloppy as this looks, in two more growing seasons it’s likely to smooth out, and in four or five seasons, the branch will be a consistant diameter; you won’t notice the grafting scar if you don’t look for it.
After six years of despising the green apple tree, I was ready to cut it down and make room for a replacement. I had bow saw in hand when it dawned on me: I’d always been fascinated by grafting; here was the perfect chance to try it.
Grafting is Easy
For a project that resembles the work of Doctor Frankenstein, grafting is surprisingly easy to do. It’s easiest to graft onto a tree that you’ve pruned for the past two seasons; such a tree will have young, thin branches ideal to receive scions taken from another tree.
Grafting is a late winter activity, though you can graft as long as your trees are dormant. A graft can essentially drown in sap if you assemble it while the tree is active. When terminal leaf buds become plump and ready to open, stop pruning and grafting.
As a winter project, grafting gets you outside when most people aren’t in their yards. For me it’s a quiet, contemplative time when I meet unsuspecting birds who alight before they notice there’s a human in their tree.
My homemade gear bucket holds bypass pruners, a utility knife, cotton twine, and tree wound dressing. I have a similar bucket to hold grafting stock that I carve into scions as I assemble a graft.
How to Make a Graft: Equipment
It takes me from five to ten minutes to assemble a graft. That’s long enough that I want to be comfortable while I’m working. It takes two hands, so I like to have a stable perch; I usually work on a step ladder. It provides a stable base and something to lean against or sit on depending on circumstances.
To gather stock from which to make scions, I use typical pruning gear (I wrote about it in Prune Fruit Trees – 2). I also use a retractable utility knife, a ball of cotton twine, and a container of tree wound dressing. I carry these in makeshift buckets I cut out of gallon milk jugs. Each jug has twine strung through its handle and up through its neck to encourage it to hang upright from a tree branch where I’m working.
While I’m grafting, I constantly shift gear among my bucket, my pockets, rungs on the ladder, and tree branches.
What, no Grafting Knife?
There are several styles of knives available called “grafting knives.” One style of grafting knife is supposed to be ideal for bud grafting, which I haven’t yet tried. Another style would obviously be useful for the types of grafts I make. Such a knife costs close to thirty dollars. My utility knife cost about four dollars, and replacement blades come in inexpensive packs of 5. Were I to snap a blade on my utility knife each season (I tend to snap one every third year), I’d spend less in 20 years than I would to buy a grafting knife.
If I were developing nursery-quality grafting skillls, I’d invest in specialized tools. There are some clever, expensive devices that will fit scions to large branches, or mate two branches of identical diameters. The technique I use is somewhat primitive, but it works… and it’s a bargain.
If it’s not cold in late winter, it may already be too late for grafting. Given the coldness, warm clothes are useful… but don’t wear garments you like. I’ve slopped tree wound dressing on winter coats, pants, sneakers, and gloves… tree wound dressing doesn’t wash out easily.
Get Grafting
I’ll continue a written discussion about grafting in my next post. In the meantime, I’ve created a video that takes you through every step. The video is nine minutes and 50 seconds long, and includes close-up photos of critical issues. It’s much better information than I had when I started grafting, and it should be enough to get you going. Please watch, and check back here soon for further details and thoughts I wasn’t able to include in the video. Please enjoy:
My small kitchen garden is coming out of dormancy a few weeks too early for my taste. I usually prune my fruit trees through March, and graft from one tree onto another throughout the month. With temperatures in the first week of March going over 60 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m concerned the buds on my fruit trees will plump up, and I’ll run out of time.
At Least Prune in Your Small Kitchen Garden
Pruning is critical to the long-term health and manageability of your fruit trees, so get it done before the sap runs. By pruning while the tree is dormant, you give the exposed green wood a chance to dry out before sap is moving through it. Just a few days’ drying is enough to seal a wound and keep it from leaking sap that could attract insects and nurture molds and microorganisms.
My past three posts have been about pruning, and I’m putting together a post about grafting. While working on these, I found a most curious growth in one of my apple trees and thought I’d share it.
A branch emerges from the trunk near the bottom-left of the photo and runs diagonally up and right. Where it crosses another branch, the two have grown together. Grafting exploits this natural malleability, letting you easily attach branches from one tree to another where they bond to their new home.
Apparently, two seasons ago a young branch rested in the crotch of a second young branch. Even though I had attempted some grafts on the same trunk, I hadn’t noticed this crossing of existing branches; in my series on pruning, I encourage you to eliminate such crossings to prevent damage to bark and competition for light.
As you can see in the photo, the two branches have grown together. I have no use for either branch—this is a tree that, through grafting, I’m converting from a green apple tree into a red apple tree (I’ll explain in my next post). Both branches are green apple tree stock. Because of their novelty, I may leave them, though I’d rather all the tree’s energy went into producing red apples.
When you’re learning something, it’s useful to look at examples of what you’re trying to achieve. I encourage you to do that with pruning: find a local commercial orchard and ask for a tour with emphasis on the trees. Do this in March and you may get to see a professional pruner in action. If you can’t get a tour, at least get where you can examine some trees. Well-tended trees can be very distinctive when they’ve dropped their leaves. Seeing how professionals shape their trees may inspire your approach to pruning.
A most amazingly frigid cold descended on my small kitchen garden yesterday. That’s actually helpful because the last week of February felt like spring, and I need a few more weeks of winter; I’m still pruning and grafting in my fruit trees.
If you’ve been following Your Small Kitchen Garden blog, I’ve been sharing with you thoughts about pruning apple trees… and most other deciduous trees. In the past two posts, we’ve laid the groundwork for pruning. In the first, we talked about reasons to prune your fruit trees, and offered some very broad guidelines. In the second post, we looked at pruning tools, and discussed the basic technique for cutting branches shorter or altogether removing them. This post offers describes what to prune and why.
A Pruning Operations Checklist
A branch in my pear tree snapped under the weight of fruit. The scar is a portal for disease and insects, so I’ll prune it away this winter. Notice the many healthy branches that are competing to take the place of the broken branch. I’ll prune most of those away as well.
Here, vaguely in order of priority, are the guidelines I follow when pruning apple trees… or peach trees or pear trees. These guidelines will work as well with all temperate climate deciduous trees:
1. If your tree is a chimera (root stock and fruiting stock grafted together), don’t prune off everything above the graft. Root stock may grow into a viable tree that even produces fruit, but not likely fruit you’d want to eat. So, if any branches emerge from the root stock (below the grafting scar), cut them off; undesirable root stock growth will compete with grafted stock.
You almost certainly won’t be able to identify the original graft on an older tree, but if the tree puts out young branches within a foot of the ground, they should go. Sadly, new, young branches sprouting low on the trunk of an old tree are a clue that the tree is unhealthy.
2. Prune all dead wood as closely as possible to live wood. If you find a live branch that has a lot of dead branches protruding from it, look for health issues with the live branch: Is the bark cracking? Is there obvious rot? Has the branch been bent severely? Are there holes in the bark? If there are a lot of dead branches on a live branch, the live branch is probably dying. You don’t need to remove it (yet), but do so if removing it fits easily with the rest of your pruning plan.
3. Prune away branches that have splits, cracks through the bark, peeling bark, or obvious rot. Fungus is a sign that a branch is only partly alive—but a healthy branch may have algae, moss, and even lichens growing on it.
Three branches of about the same diameter run nearly parallel. Branches that emerge from these intertwine, competing for sunshine. If these branches all emerge from the same “parent” branch, it makes sense to remove two of them. If they emerge from separate parents, removing competing sub-branches and shortening one or two of the larger branches shown may be the better choice.
4. Prune to rid trees of branches that touch each other—or that are growing into the same space as other branches. Touching branches rub in the wind, making holes in the bark. They might also trap water that promotes rot and attracts insects. Branches growing into the same space compete for sunlight. Generally, preserve the healthier branch, and remove the weaker one.
5. Don’t make one branch do the work of several. It’s an easy mistake to make: You find three or four main branches whose lesser branches grow into the same space. Removing all but one of the main branches would simplify the tree. However, it would be better to preserve the main branches and prune lesser branches from them. This encourages new growth from the main branches, and might produce lesser branches to fill the tree out in other directions.
6. Prune branches from above to let light onto the branches below… and to let light into the middle of the tree. A tree north of the equator may need more severe pruning of its southern branches as those shade lower branches on the north side of the tree. My apple trees are on a north-facing hill, so the lower, northern branches see little sunlight. While the trees grow generally up, newer growth tends to lean southward, and those low, northern branches curve around the rest of the tree.
Here’s my best apple tree with a six-foot step ladder for scale. The tree is out of control; I’ll never be able to reach apples in those crazy high branches. Notice that the tree seems to reach out over the stepladder with only low branches on the opposite side of the trunk. Yes: the stepladder is on the south side of the tree. New growth follows the sun, particularly when you don’t prune each season.
7. Prune off branches that offend your sense of aesthetics or practicality. What do I mean? Aesthetics: does the tree suite your eye? Does it fit into your small kitchen garden’s landscape? Does it block a view you wish you had? Practicality: I hate ducking under branches when I mow the lawn; I don’t want my fruit trees to branch in the first six feet of trunk. You may not care about ducking, but does the tree block a window or shade a planting bed? Once you’ve taken care of the big problems (which may require a season or two of pruning), move on to shaping the trees so they make sense to you.
8. Don’t cut really thick branches if you can avoid it, and especially resist cutting the tree’s leader. A big scar stresses the tree and makes it more susceptible to disease. Cutting large branches may start the tree into decline.
9. Don’t paint pruning cuts with sealant or paint. These may prevent the tree from healing properly.
10. Don’t prune within one-year-old growth. The last few inches of a tree’s branches are the previous season’s delicate growth. Cut off some of it, and the rest might dry out and die. To shorten a branch, cut farther down the branch in the 2nd or 3rd year’s section. If there are spurs sticking out from the branch beyond the pruning point, you’re cutting within older growth.
Breaking Rules
Especially when you’re recovering an old, neglected tree, all of these guidelines come into play. But guideline number 8 will give you the greatest challenge. Three of the five fruit trees that came with our house were simply too messy; I cut several large branches to limit their height and encourage spreading and enlarging of the lower branches.
Caution When Shortening
When you cut a branch shorter to promote new growth, leave at least three leaf buds or branches between the cut and the point where the branch is attached. This gives the branch more chances to thrive; if you leave just one bud and it dies, the branch will likely go with it.
I did the most severe pruning in a tree I didn’t like. My thinking? If I kill it, I have one more excuse to cut it down. In that tree, I cut out the leader and several side branches that had grown as thick as the leader and ran parallel to it. These were five- and six-inch diameter trunks.
Most of the large cuts I made have healed well. However, the most severe cut didn’t heal, and the wood is rotting a hole into the tree. The tree isn’t in great health, and I expect it won’t outlive me (knock wood)… though I’m trying to engineer it for longer life.
If you’re going to cut such large branches:
1. Cut side branches close to the tree’s trunk with the saw blade running parallel to the trunk.
2. Cut the leader just above several healthy branches that can compete to replace the leader once it’s gone.
3. When cutting a vertical branch—particularly a very thick one, cut at a bias so you don’t leave a horizontal surface; water should run easily off of the newly-exposed wood.
It’s best to shape a tree when it’s young and keep it under control so you never have to cut branches more than an inch or two in diameter.
Leaf buds in first-year growth hug the twig from which they grow. Flowering buds appear on older growth on the ends of spurs. When shortening a branch, cut behind at least one fruiting bud so you know you’re not pruning in last year’s growth. it’s OK to make that cut at a leaf bud or a flowering bud.
I was out in my small kitchen garden this morning, pruning apple trees. For people in hardiness zones 6 and lower, pruning season is upon us: late winter ends in just 21 days! If you haven’t pruned your fruit trees this winter, you should get started.
Have you never pruned a tree? Follow along. I had planned this post to examine the tools you’ll use, and to lay out a strategy to get good results. The post got quite long, so I’ve divided it into two parts. This one introduces pruning tools and shows how to use them.
Shears—For young trees, or trees that you’ve managed well over the years, pruning sheers may be enough to do the annual job; they’ll cut through branches up to about the diameter of a pencil. Shears fit easily in a pocket, so you stow them when you’re climbing ladders or trees and pull them out when you’re ready to prune.
A bypass pruner has scissor-like action. That is, two cutting blades slide past each other, each cutting into the branch.
An anvil pruner has one cutting blade that pinches the branch against a flat metal surface until the branch separates.
Two blades of a bypass pruner (left) cut a branch from opposite sides, letting you get close to your work, and decreasing the likelihood of crushing the branch. The single blade of an anvil pruner pinches a branch against a flat surface. In my experience, this often crushes the branch, damaging the leaf bud I’m trying to leave behind.
Perhaps the greatest innovation in pruning shears is the ratcheting shear. When you’re cutting heavy branches, you might not have enough strength to get through with one squeeze. A ratcheting shear lets you start a cut, release pressure, and squeeze again with greater leverage—it’s astonishing how easily a good ratcheting action can complete a cut.
Loppers—When you need to cut through branches thicker than a pencil, use loppers. Loppers come in many sizes. Generally, the longer the handles, the larger the branches they can shear. My loppers easily cut branches the thickness of broomsticks, and I’ve used them to cut branches perhaps twice that… albeit with less-than-ideal results. You can find both bypass and anvil loppers, and there are even ratcheting loppers.
The long handles of loppers give you a lot of leverage to shear off large branches. The handles on this set are three feet long, providing welcome reach into my too-tall trees.
Loppers are too large to put in your pocket, but they extend your reach so you won’t have to climb as high for light-to-medium pruning jobs.
My pruning saw has large teeth on one side for fast cuts through thick branches, and fine teeth on the other side for precise, clean cuts through small branches. I use the smaller teeth when I do grafting; if you plan never to graft, get a saw with big teeth. You’ll get through your pruning quickly.
Pruning saws—For the very thick branches, a pruning saw is handy. You can use other saws—a bow saw would be my first choice—but you’ll find a pruning saw among the easiest to fit into tight spaces and awkward positions you often deal with when working in trees.
I have a pruning saw with very coarse teeth on one side, and fine teeth on the other. The fine teeth have almost no set, so they can cut only very small branches without binding (read the box about Saw Teeth for an explanation of tooth set).
A Pruning Cut
The “how” of making a pruning cut is simple. There are two types: One that shortens a branch, and one that altogether removes a branch. My next post provides guidance on which branches to cut and why. Here’s how to make pruning cuts.
Shortening a Branch
I wish I’d chosen a healthier-looking spur to leave as this branch’s new terminus. But what matters for the discussion is where I’m cutting relative to the spur. The blades roughly match the angle of the spur, but miss the slight bulge where it meets the supporting branch.
To shorten a branch, always cut just beyond a leaf or fruiting bud. Wood protruding beyond the last living bud will most certainly die, leaving a point-of-entry for rot, insects, and microorganisms. When you cut close to a bud, that bud assumes the “leader” role for the branch and grows vigorously in the coming season. Because no wood protrudes beyond the bud, the vigorous new growth quickly scabs over and protects the bare wood.
Note that a bud protrudes from a branch at an angle. Cut along that angle without nicking the wood that directly supports the bud (see photo).
Removing a Branch
Cut a branch off as close as possible to the branch or trunk from which it’s growing. Usually, there is a bulge on the parent branch where the smaller branch emerges from it. Cut flush against that bulge without cutting into it. Also, don’t nick or scratch the bark on the limbs you’re leaving attached. When sawing, lay the saw blade onto the branch you’re preserving, gently engage the limb you’re removing, then saw carefully without letting the blade rub against the supporting branch. Don’t force the blade into the cut, and don’t rush.
Get the loppers in tight against the anchor branch from which you’re pruning another branch. If the branch fits comfortably in the blades of the lopper, you should get a clean cut that heals over in a year or two. In the photo on the right, notice the obvious margin between the branch and the bulge in the branch from which it protrudes. Remove the branch flush with the bulge… but leave the bulge.
As you reach the end of a cut, support the branch so it doesn’t pinch the saw or splinter away from the tree. Measure your final strokes so the blade doesn’t slip through and accidentally gouge bark. If your saw has teeth on both edges of the blade, you need to be extra careful to keep the rear teeth from messing up the branch you’re retaining.
When using loppers or shears to remove a branch, get the blades as close to the base of the branch as possible, and try to make a clean cut without stabbing the anchor branch. I feel as though I can get a closer cut with bypass pruners than I can with anvil pruners.
Saw Teeth
Few sawyers keep their hands moving in a perfectly straight line as they cut, and every tiny deviation from a straight line flexes the blade against the cut it’s making. Flex it enough and the saw binds; you need to straighten it in the cut to continue sawing.
To give sawyers a margin of error, saw manufacturers build saws with tooth set. The tooth set of a saw is the distance a tooth bends away from the center of the saw blade. Generally, every other tooth’s set goes to one side of the saw blade while the intervening teeth go to the opposite side of the blade. This makes the cutting edge of the blade wider than the blade itself, providing some play as you cut through thick wood.
The width of the slot that the saw makes as it cuts wood is the kerf. The width of the blade plus the set of the teeth determines the kerf of the cut.
A wide-mouth pint canning jar, a band (or a rubber band), and seeds are all you need to start a very small kitchen garden in your kitchen.
I keep hearing from people who are doing spring planting in their small kitchen gardens. Folks on the US Pacific coast, down into the southwestern states, and across to the gulf states are either laying out garden beds or planting spring crops. Since hearing this makes my teeth grind at night, I’m starting an indoor gardening project that every cold-frustrated gardener can handle with minimal inconvenience: growing sprouts.
When I was a kid, bean sprouts were an amazing innovation acquired from Chinese cooking and popularized by people referred to as the crunchy granola set. Today, bean sprouts have become a minor subset of an expanding sprout-growing culture. Even in rather pedestrian grocery stores you can find bean sprouts, clover sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, and maybe even broccoli sprouts. In specialty grocery stores you might find a dozen types of sprouts.
Put three tablespoons of alfalfa seeds in a jar, rinse them thoroughly, then cover them with water and let them soak overnight. I used a chopstick to stir the seeds as I rinsed them; swirling might have worked as well.
More Winter Relief
Before spring, I anticipate no more escape from the cold of winter. So, I’m going to grow some sprouts. Sadly, I’m not a big fan of sprouts, but I trust that growing something fresh—anything I can eat—will help get me through the next seven weeks (whereupon we’ll talk about pruning and grafting apple and pear trees).
I’ve never grown my own sprouts, but I’ve seen it done. And, anticipating this urge, I bought a little bag of alfalfa seeds at a natural foods store about two months ago. Here’s how it’s going down:
To hold the cloth cover on your sprout jar, use a band designed to hold on a canning lid. Alternatively, a rubber band or an elastic hair band can do the job.
A Simple Small Kitchen Garden
I used a clean, one pint canning jar. I also used the lining from an old swimsuit that never quite fit me; it’s a tightly-woven elastic net that lets water through quickly, but retains even very small seeds. You can use nylon pantyhose or stockings, cheesecloth, or some other non-toxic material you find around the house.
Here is a sprout garden planted and ready to sit for 8 to 12 hours before its next rinsing. I’ve leaned the jar on a chopstick so residual water can drain away from the seeds.
I put about a half inch of seeds into the canning jar—that’s three tablespoons of seeds—and rinsed them four times. To rinse, I filled the jar two-thirds with water, stirred vigorously with a chopstick, then gently poured off as much water as possible without losing seeds. Finally, I filled the jar halfway with water, and set it in the middle of the dining room table.
The next morning I stretched the swimsuit liner across the top of the jar and held it in place with a canning band. I poured off the water and rinsed the seeds two or three times. Then I poured off all the water and left the seeds in a kitchen cabinet (where it’s dark). I’ll rinse the seeds again around noon, and pour off the water. Before I go to bed, I’ll repeat this rinse cycle… and I’ll go three times a day for four or five days. For the truly lazy gardener, I understand that rinsing only in the morning and the evening will work just fine.
Get a sampler of seeds certified for home sprout gardens. This set includes alfalfa, mung bean, broccoli, green lentil, clover, buckwheat, radish, and salad greens. Click here to get started today.
In four days I expect there will be healthy sprouts in the jar. I’ll set it in a south-facing window so the sprouts green up a bit, and I’ll keep rinsing for another day or two. Finally, I’ll either eat the sprouts, or put them in the refrigerator; they’ll keep for several days in the fridge until I’m ready to eat them.
You Go Too
Could this be easier? I don’t think so. Will it work? It worked for my crunchy granola friends in the 70s. Here are some important tidbits:
Many types of seeds will do. Try these: alfalfa, clover, broccoli, radish, mung beans, garbanzo beans, lettuce, spinach, peas. Different sprouts have distinctively different flavors.
Get seeds certified for home sprouting; apparently some seeds have come with salmonella, and people have gotten sick from eating raw sprouts. If you have any doubt about your seeds’ origins, you can still sprout them, but cook the sprouts before you eat them! There’s more information here.
If mold appears on your sprouts, don’t eat them. Mold is more likely to grow in a humid environment—which you create when you start sprouts. But in the dry winter air, there’s less likely to be mold spores drifting through. I’ll let you know if mold becomes a problem for me.
Use sprouts in salads, sandwiches, spreads, stir-fry, breads… be creative.
Growing sprouts is a simple project that takes very little space, so get started! I expect to set up a new batch of seeds every five-to-seven days at least until I can work in my outdoor garden. For the rest of the winter, sprouts will be my small kitchen garden. I’ll post an update in a few days with a picture of my alfalfa babies.
Here are links to other articles about growing sprouts:
Living Healthy Life: Growing Sprouts – You can take a whole array of expensive vitamin supplements and still not get the nutritional bbenefits/b that these very inexpensive additions to your diet will provide. b…/b. Read more: Living Healthy Life: Growing Sprouts.
» Joy of growing Sprouts and Microgreens – Joy of growing Sprouts and Microgreens. Search. Best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Posted on October 4, 2008 at 2:28 pm. Joy of growing Sprouts and Microgreens. I LOVE to eat sprouts. More than that I love to SEE sprouts. …
The Easiest Vegetable Garden Anyone Can Grow Anywhere, Anytime! – … I think I may just need to go make another St. Jude’s tuna sandwich with my next batch of fresh broccoli sprouts! For additional reading:. Sprouts for Your Health; Risks Associated with Sprouts; Growing Sprouts for Your Health.
While this completely neglected apple looks scrumptious in the tree, there is a near 100% certainty that it’s home to a grub or a worm or a burrowing insect.
I’ve explained in past posts (about fruit trees) that growing fruit trees as a part of your small kitchen garden strategy adds a boatload of work to an otherwise potentially low-impact activity. Especially with apples, if you don’t follow a regular maintenance schedule, your fruit trees won’t reward you well.
Even as I’ve embarked on the simple mission of planting a new pear tree in my own home kitchen garden this year, I’m ruing the near total neglect I gave my fruit trees through the growing season.
Tree Things I Didn’t Do
Dormant Oil—This is a bigger confession than I care to make: I have never completed all the annual fruit tree maintenance jobs recommended by expert agriculturalists. One that has always eluded me is supposed to happen in mid-to-late winter: spraying the tree with dormant oil. Dormant oil kills several types of bugs that can weaken a fruit tree—and that may attach themselves and hold on through the winter.
As in every year I’ve had fruit trees, I didn’t apply dormant oil this year.
Pruning—In very late winter, it’s important to prune a fruit tree. You remove dead wood, take out branches that cross each other (to reduce rubbing that may damage the bark), open up the tree’s crown so sunlight can make it to the tree’s lower branches, do some shaping to make the fruit-bearing branches more accessible, and cut back limbs to promote new growth.
Traditionally, I’ve pruned my trees properly, and I’ve even done a lot of grafting. I didn’t do any pruning or grafting this year.
Mulch & Fertilizer—It’s helpful to mulch around a tree that grows out of your lawn. Mulching retains moisture, guards the soil from insects and burrowing animals, and keeps your lawnmower away from the tree’s trunk. Mulch helps retain moisture, cuts down on plants that compete for the moisture, and provides shallow roots with some insulation against rapid freezing and sudden extreme swings in temperature. Fertilizer is a quick pick-me up, providing nourishment at crucial developmental points during the year.
I’ve never been good about mulching, though my wife sometimes does the job. I do usually fertilize… but I neither mulched nor fertilized my fruit trees this year.
Culling—Especially with peach trees, and with apple trees to a lesser extent, a tree’s tendency to be prolific can result in production of small fruits. Peach tree branches may be lined with blossoms, and if every one of them grows into a peach, they’ll be small peaches indeed. So, shortly after the petals drop off and you can clearly identify baby peaches, it’s a good idea to pick off and discard a lot of the babies. Usually a two-step process, you first pick off fruits from clusters leaving just a single fruit where there was a cluster. A week or two later, you pick off the smaller fruits, leaving one every eight or nine inches along each branch.
This is typical of an apple that has had no help in fending off insect marauders. I’d have no desire to bite into this one, and paring it for use in pie or apple sauce would be only slightly less appetizing.
Certain insecticides cull fruits when the fruits are small. For example, applying Sevin brand insecticide to an apple tree right after the petals fall will usually cause some fruits to fall… and using a higher concentration of Sevin culls a greater number of fruits.
I didn’t do any culling this season.
Pest-prevention—Pears, peaches, and plums grow surprisingly “clean” in central Pennsylvania even if you do nothing to fight off insects. Apples are another story. If I don’t treat my apple trees with some type of bug spray repeatedly, nearly every apple I harvest will hold hidden biological treasures. Chemical insecticides require application immediately after petals fall, and again every ten to fourteen days until harvest. Admittedly, I’ve not tried organic treatments to protect my apples… if you’ve had success with any, please leave a comment that tells about frequency of application and efficacy of the product.
This season, I applied insecticide right after petal-fall, and, perhaps, two weeks later. After that, my apples became insect incubators.
Woodchucks, skunks, porcupines, raccoons, and, perhaps, smaller rodents, suplement their diets with my rotting apples. There is also a healthy bee and wasp population eating the sweet fruit. The alcohol fumes coming off the apples might draw attention from prohibitionists.
Harvest—Of course, if you grow fruit but never harvest it, you don’t actually have fruit. Peaches provide a window of as long as a month during which you can pick some, let them ripen indoors, pick some more, and so on (picking a peach speeds it to ripen—but it should already look ripe before you pick it). Then, all at once, the ones still on the trees soften, shrivel, and drop off. Pears seem to hold on for several months, but you should harvest pears the moment any full-sized one drops off on its own account. You can start picking apples when they first look ripe, and continue picking right up until leaves are falling. The apples will start to jump out of the trees on their own, so it can become a daily chore to pick up fallen apples before rodents chew on them, and then to pick apples off the trees so you get some that aren’t bruised by the fall.
Yes, I’ve harvested apples this year, but my motivation is very low. Most of my apples are fermenting in my lawn while providing nutrition to insects and rodents. The ones I’ve gotten to before the predators all have been colonized by boring insects—even apples I’ve picked from the trees.
There’s Always Next Year
When the season started, I had been excited about mild weather and a bumper crop of apple blossoms. A few awkwardly-timed rain storms (which interfere with insecticide treatments), and heavy focus on non-gardening-related activities made me miss insecticide application for about six weeks. At that point, it was pointless to jump back in and hope for good results; I could see most fruits were already badly formed.
It sometimes takes a year like this to get me motivated for the next five years: With last year’s bumper crop of well-cared-for apples, I canned some nine gallons of apple sauce. I enjoyed canning two gallons of it, and canning the rest felt like a forced march.
When it comes time to prune and graft in March, I’ll remember the overwhelming smell of fermentation and the sticky gushiness under the apple trees during my autumn lawn mowing. It’ll be enough to get me out to work on my fruit trees.
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