Protect the Baby Fruit: Orchard News

Last Saturday, May 22, volunteers came together in the Solstice P-Patch orchard to tend to all the new fruit emerging on the apple, pear, and fig trees. Now that pollinators have done their jobs and blossoms have given way to fruit, it's time to put a series of organic strategies to work to protect the vulnerable crops while they ripen. If you've wandered through the orchard lately and noticed something white and powdery covering the new fruit, it's not a disease! Sandra has been spraying the trees with kaolin clay, an organic method of pest control. The primary targets are apple maggots and codling moths, which can create unsightly holes and rot inside the apples. The clay coating doesn't last long, so this is merely an early preventative measure to protect the fruit until it can be covered-- time-consuming labor that our gardeners completed with a-plum!

On Saturday, gardeners first thinned the apples to ensure the best possible harvest of large, healthy fruits. The idea is to pare down each cluster of tiny apples so that only the two largest fruits remain, ideally with about six inches of space between them. It might feel wrong to cut off perfectly good young fruit, but doing so ensures that the remaining apples have the space and nutrients to grow to full size, while also preventing rot that can occur when clustered fruits touch and rub together.

After each tree was thinned, it was covered by a large net. This work requires several sets of hands and some very tall bamboo sticks topped with tennis balls, which keep the nets from ripping. Everyone works in sync to lift the nets over the treetops and gently lower them into the place, a strategy Zane compared to a barn raising. When the nets are more or less centered around the tree, they are gently lowered and then gathered around the trunk. Finally, gardeners crouch under the trees and stitch together the end of the netting, starting at the trunk and working outwards to create a sealed protective barrier around each tree that still allows in plenty of air, water, and sunshine.

Over at the pear trees, Essie and Katherine gently wrapped each burgeoning pear in a tiny nylon sleeve, similar to the toe of a pair of stockings. Once in place, these barriers stretch as the fruit grows, protecting it from a variety of pests, especially those that burrow into and ruin the pears.

Curious about the orchard and interested in learning more about our trees? Check out the the P-Patch Gem Orchard webpage. We'll share more updates about the orchard as the season goes forward. In the meantime...start dreaming about goodies to make with apples, pears, and plums! For more information on organic orchard maintenance, please click the links below:

• Kaolin Clay for Pest Management, from the Holistic Orchard Network

• Thinning Fruit Trees: Why and How, from GrowVeg

• Nylon Maggot Barriers, from the Seattle Fruit Tree Society