Friday, August 1, 2014

Honeycrisp Trees are in the Ground!

Small Updates First:  

We will be having We-Pick/U-Pick Blueberries this Saturday, 9am-4pm but Saturday may be the last day.  Possibly next Thursday thru Saturday we may be open depending on how the fruit looks.  But after that we say good-bye to blueberries for another year.

But the good news is that U-Pick apples are right around the corner.  We keep checking our Gravensteins.  Still a bit too green but will keep checking and I will post on here when they are ready. 

Farm Happenings:

Skid steer with auger = good!  Shovel = No good!
I am so thankful for advances in technology.   Using the auger to dig the tree holes was great.  We even had a smaller one for the post holes.  Of course, I AM thankful for shovels too because they do fill the holes in.
Doug digging holes
Digging apple tree holes with an auger.

trees before planted
Grandpa supervising the planting.
We strung a line to keep the row straight, then started planting.

graphed
If you look closely, you can see the tree is grafted.  I think I talked about this in a previous post a bit but a little recap.  It is impossible to get Honeycrisp trees right now ordered in so we took some cuttings and grafted them onto  Golden Delicious trees.  Eventually we will cut the Golden Delicious tree off as the Honeycrisp graft takes off. (And actually ALL apple trees are grafted....the bottom rootstock decides how big the tree will grow, and the top graft decides what kind of fruit the tree will bear.)
completed apple orchard
And there they be!  All planted and ready to grow.
Next things to check off are to get some sprinkler heads attached to the underground irrigation and plant some grass rows.  Oh and of course continue putting the posts up (working on that now) and stringing some wire to help train the trees to grow straight.

And something just for fun.....
We are hoping this keeps the birds from stealing our blueberries.
All Birds Do not Go Beyond This FenceBurma Shave style  :)
Hope you are all are surviving the heat!  I'm sure some of you LOVE it!  And others, like me, are just trying to survive it :)

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