Bearing Fruit




We moved to our farm in December of 2004 before Georgia was born and that spring we went a little crazy with the perennial fruits and vegetables, eager to get everything and anything started. As you can see, our efforts paid off with a nice peach harvest this year, with two of our trees bearing fruit... Here's how all those perennials fared....

Asparagus: Neglected and transplanted twice, our asparagus keeps soldiering on though we haven't harvested any as of yet - it seems like adding insult to injury! I'm hoping that next year, baby-less, we'll be able to treat it right, harvest the first few weeks of spears, and then keep it weeded and mulched so it can grow even stronger.

Grapes: Again, transplanted and transplanted again, the two surviving grape vines (I think we started with three or four) are thriving in their new location by the goat pasture. They both flowered this year and are loaded with grapes - from the appearance of them, I *think* one is a Concord and one is a green seedless variety. Aside from a little pruning to keep air flowing when they started getting powdery mildew, they've been very low maintenance. Next spring we're going to build a new arbor and plant more of the Concords, for sale at market (which is sorely lacking in organic fruit) and to make enough jelly to get us through the year.

Pears: Our pear trees grow wonderfully here, without too much insect damage. They are going on two years here, and no blossoms yet, but I think once they do start bearing they will do very well. We don't have pear orchards around here, so no big sources of disease or pests.

Apples: Hah! Oh, our poor apple trees. I've mentioned it on the blog before, but we live surrounded by several very large commercial apple orchards and the pests and disease just come flowing in from the conventional orchards and decimate our poor non-sprayed trees. I may pull them next year and plant something else - I don't ever see them doing well...

Raspberries: I have a sentimental attachment to these, growing up with a huge established planting, but they struggled their first year and didn't come back the next...

Blueberries: Again, I grew up surrounded by established blueberry bushes and would love to have the same here, but the wee little bushes were mowed over a few times and were goners. The large area we cleared when our pool was being demolished would be perfect for a new large planting of twenty or thirty bushes, but for now we are lucky to have a large organic u-pick blueberry farm within driving distance.

Rhubarb: I threw one of these in as an experiment last year and it's doing very well...we'll add more next spring for market.

Future plans include fig trees (they need some protection in the winter but I think they'll be worth the trouble) and some red currant bushes - I grew up with those too, and I think they'll appeal to our European customers.

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Posted: Mon - July 28, 2008 at 10:03 AM        

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