Port Potager

Over April vacation (so about three weekends ago now) we finally planted our new apple trees . It was a fairly long day that required first removing several of the older fruit trees that were either dead, dying, or unproductive enough to have lost their place: The biggest tree we took out was the apricot, seen above in a state of partial completion. It's a shame that this tree never actually bore more than a handful of fruit , because it was well formed, but oh well.  Once the old trees were removed, we planted the new ones in new holes, creating some more space as we went. Here's the new Winesap in the ground: All of our new plantings are cocked ever-so-slightly into the prevailing winds, which should give them a little extra purchase and hopefully eliminate the need for staking .  Once all four new trees were planted, we were left with a rather pockmarked front lawn of bare patches where old trees (and straight-up dead patches of neglected grass) we...

This spring we tried a few new things to keep our crops safe from animals and insects that would like to swipe more than their fair share. One promising idea was using plastic fruit containers to keep squirrels away from our ripening tree fruits. But after all of our blustery days of downpours this month, most of those containers ended up on the ground: I wouldn't mind just snapping them back in place, but the real problem is that they often brought the fruit down with them. I'm not sure if this is a flaw in the system overall, or more of an issue with apricots being kind of delicate in hanging on the tree (at least, this has been true for us — it's not the first time we've accidentally knocked one off the branch before it was ripe).  Alas, the only one we have left on the tree is this one that never made it into a container in the first place. I thought about removing the remaining containers last weekend, but decided to ride out the experiment instea...

In the orchard, nine out of ten of our older trees blossomed this spring and look to be setting fruit this season. (The new fig tree  we planted at the end of April is still just a stick, albeit one with two small green buds on it.) Our apricot is the farthest along, and although it's not a bumper crop, we have a bunch of small fruits: And, as you can see, I spent some time this weekend rigging up a new anti-squirrel system on the apricot tree. I first saw this idea  over at rootsimple.com  and was able to give it a try thanks to lots of friends who saved up their plastic fruit containers over the winter. Grocery store berry boxes are perfect for this, since they are ventilated, and often snap shut. All I had to do was close them around our baby apricots (which I learned to do gently, since I knocked one off its branch by mistake). Hopefully these boxes will confound the squirrels, and we won't lose our whole harvest to them again this year.  ...

After all our work to save the apricots , the squirrels overran the orchard and got almost all of them.  All save one: This is the one small apricot that was left, the one that we swaddled in netting to try to save.  It worked, and today it shouted out bright orange on the tree, and was a little soft under pressure when we gave it a squeeze. It smelled good, too. As you can see by the pale greenish-yellow bands, it's a little underripe. We picked it anyway, though, because we were worried that it would be overripe — or worse, missing — by the time we get back from vacation next week. It's hard to split an apricot the size of a silver dollar four ways, so we sliced it up into a tart: So we're a little obsessed with the puff pastry + everything from our garden + cheese = delicious goodness formula right now. It's hard to argue with that kind of sure-fire success in the kitchen. Anyway, it's super easy. Slice up your teeny tiny apric...

After a week of rain, I took a stroll through the orchard to give it a check and see if the trees needed any spraying (we use a judicious bit of insecticidal soap to control aphids and a copper fungicide for rusts). And this is what I found: On the ground under our apricot tree (the one we worked so, so hard to nurture through the spring freeze ; the one that was loaded with tiny green apricots) are a pile of half-eaten apricots. This sin't just a June drop or wind damage. You can see the bite marks: One apricot is left on the tree. The rest are gone.  Gone. Eaten by squirrels . This is my assumption, at least, after some internet research revealed just how much those horrifying tree rats like apricots. And it's not just the apricots. The squirrels (or possibly birds, but this seems doubtful) ate every last nectarine, and all but two Granny Smith apples. So from four trees that were bearing their first fruit this season, we have three pieces of fru...

Our fruit trees are looking good! Check out all these peaches: They are still green right now, and they have so much fuzz that they look mostly silvery in the sunlight. They are covering almost every branch right now. We won't get all of those to ripen — it wouldn't be possible for the tree to bear them all, so many will fall off in the coming weeks. Still, it feels bounteous right now--especially when you stand close to the tree and inhale. Smells like peaches already! These are our nectarines. This tree is much smaller than the peach, but it's doing quite well. Right now they are about as big as grapes, so we have a ways to go.  Here are two of our apricots. We managed to save most of them  from the late frost, and they are doing well. Some have dropped, but nothing looks out of the ordinary. These should be the first fruits to ripen this summer, and we are definitely looking forward to it! We haven't had our own garden (or orchard) fruit sinc...

This week our peaches and nectarines are in bloom: These trees have pink blossoms, and they are pretty prolific bloomers — the trees are covered! I have seen bees flying about, so I am hopeful that we will have fruit this year. The peach tree farthest down the row, though, is also our youngest. We planted it last spring to replace the one that didn't make it the first time around. That means that this year (its second year) we need to pick off all the blossoms so the tree's energy goes into a healthy root system and not into fruit production just yet. This is kind of sad to do, because you are killing off all your fruit on that tree for the year, but it's much better for the tree in the long run. Here's our de-blossomed Fingerlakes peach tree: Elsewhere in the orchard, the Granny Smith apple is blossoming nicely: It's a little hard to see in the bright sunshine of this photo, but it is covered with white blossoms. This tree is in bloom at t...

It may be too early to offer a solid verdict here. We won't know for absolutely certain if the blossoms survived until they swell into baby fruits in a few weeks. So far, though, things look okay. First, the apple tree in its tent: It was fairly warm in there when I poked my head in this afternoon, and I think this tree should be fine. The tent managed to stay up in the wind, and with the heat and coverage I think it should do okay for the next couple of cold nights (which aren't supposed to be quite as cold as last night). A closer look at the state of the blossoms: To my eye, these seem unscathed, so I'm feeling pretty good about the prospects for the apples. On the other hand, it looks like the apricot blossoms got some frostbite in the wind and the cold: It's not terrible, but you can see that (despite the lights nearby), some petals are brown and dead. I am somewhat hopeful, though, because I didn't see any blossoms that lost all the...

Remember when it was in the 80s for two weeks and everything burst into bloom while I was at the beach? Well, yesterday the temperatures plummeted, and in our backyard the low hit 25 degrees. That wasn't just a kiss of 25 and a quick warm-up when the sun came up, either. It was down to 32 at sunset, so it was at or below freezing for at least 12 hours last night. Did I mention winds from the north gusting to 40 mph? We knew it was coming (well, except for the winds, although given the windy   weather history here , I suppose we should have expected that as well), so I was researching how to protect our tender fruit trees over the weekend. Because they are big (well, in general — ours aren't actually all that big yet), fruit trees are harder to protect than other tender plants that are low to the ground and can just get covered up. For example, our cold frame is easy: Notice, though, that this time we used some leftover bricks as weights so the glass wou...

The past two days were just too beautiful to do anything but go for long walks in the sunshine on Plum Island: I don't think it's possible to overstate what an incredible gift this week has been. I guess if you live below the Mason Dixon line it might be hard to understand, but an 80-degree day in March in northeastern Massachusetts is nothing short of miraculous. Anyway, while I was dipping my toes in the ocean with my kids, stuff happened while I wasn't really looking, including the following: Our granite steps finally arrived! We never got around to ordering them when we finished all the bricks, but now that they are in place, it looks like they've always been there. Kirk muscled them into position while I was at the beach, so that was a doubly nice surprise.   Along with the delivery of our back steps came another giant pile of dirt from Landscaper's Depot . This is another mixture of half loam and half compost, and we need it to fi...