We love fruit trees. Apples are my favorite. We have planted a few young trees
up here, and will certainly plant many more. We have some old trees too.
We gave this old gal a big structural pruning a few years ago, and it looks like it is time again.
There we go, much better now.
I gained the confidence to prune on our fruit trees from the great folks at the Home Orchard Society. If you live in Oregon's Willamette Valley, the Home Orchard Society is a great resource.
They are having one of their biggest events of the year this weekend. It is the Propagation Fair, at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds. It happens Saturday March 19th.
At the fair they will have an enormous variety of fruit tree scions. (Scions are clippings from mature trees.) They will also have a variety of different rootstocks. If you know how to graft, you can just buy some rootstock and off you go. If you don't know how, they will graft them for you.
The scions are free!
They sell Mason Bees too. Mason Bees are a great way to improve pollination in your area without the complexity of having a hive.
The Home Orchard Society also offer grafting classes, through Clackamas Community College. June and I took them last month. We did a few grafts there, and will do more if we can make it to the Propagation Fair.
Even if you are not quite ready to plant the trees yet, you should still go to the fair. It will open your eyes to the multitudinous variety of trees you could possibly grow.
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..I think I am going to buy some fruit trees in the spring..but I need to find a good spot for them first..but I also think I would have a real problem with deer! HOw are the trees you planted doing?
ReplyDeleteWe planted 5 apple trees, and 4 are still OK. The one we lost, we lost to...rabbits!
ReplyDeleteWe took fence wire and made cages for them. The fencing had a graduated box size, small at the bottom, large the top. In my brilliance, I turned them upside down, putting the small holes at the top so the deer could not nibble through. That but the large holes at the bottom, a welcoming entrance for the rabbits.
They girdled the tree, and it died.
The others are doing fine. We topped the cages with bird netting, so the deer can't reach in over the top.
And we found we had to stake them down. I was very surprised that the wind would blow them away. Now that we are all right-side up and staked down, we are good for a couple more years. When they get taller than 6' we will have to rethink things.
Thanks for the comment!