Pruning Schedule - Winter 2013

I'm starting earlier to prune fruit trees this Winter, for a variety of reasons:
-  Good for the fruit trees, good for the fruit;
-  This will be a heavy blossom year;
-  Enjoy a preview now, flowers in your home!

Here are the Saturdays I plan to get out and prune fruit trees:
February 9, 16;
March 2, 16, 30;  April 20

Here are the orchards we'll focus on:
Emma Townsite orchard;
Mary Lou Zordel's orchard on Emma Road;
Happy Day Ranch in Emma;
Fisher Creek Homestead apple trees above Cattle Creek;

Details:
Saturday, April 20:  Once again, I'm afraid we'll have to postpone our visit to Fisher Creek!  This past week has brought lots of snow, and Saturday promises to be raining or snowing again.  The hike in to Fisher Creek would be quite muddy, I'm afraid.  Pruning in Emma will also be challenged for the same weather, so I'm going to have to cancel the rest of our pruning for the season, as the blossoms will soon be opening.

Fisher Creek Apple Trees at the old Haff Homestead on Fisher Creek.  There’s a wonderful history there, that I’d love to share. I suggest that we meet at 9:30 at the start of the driving route, at Cattle Creek Road and Hwy 82.  From there, we’ll drive up in fewer cars.  I’ll be bringing two aluminum orchard ladders, so my little “ladder truck” will be going up, and I can fit three people in addition to myself.  In the link below, you'll find paths for driving and hiking to reach the trees.  Please bring your lunch, water, pruning tools and work gloves.  Come back to this blog in advance of April 20, as snow/mud conditions on the ground in Fisher Creek may cause us to change the location of this workshop to Happy Day Ranch in Emma.

Saturday, March 30:  Zordel Orchard in Emma (park at the Emma Schoolhouse and carpool west on Emma Road to the Zordel Orchard) at 10:00 am.  We'll prune until 2:00 or 3:00, so please bring a bag lunch, water, pruning tools and work gloves.  After this session, everyone is invited to my home in the Hillside neighborhood above downtown Basalt for a few refreshments, a tour of the fruit trees I've been pruning (and planting) since 1984, and for some apricot fruiting wood you can take home and blossom indoors.  Placemarks for Happy Day Ranch and MT-Home are available in the Google Earth Link, below.


Download "Google Earth" Placemarks for these places;

We have two new aluminum orchard ladders, a gift from C.O.R.E., making our work a bit more safe and secure.  If you want to join the pruning work on any given orchard or any of the Saturdays listed, leave us a comment below this post, and follow this blog as we approach each pruning date, for updates.

In the right sidebar are shown some examples of the best pruning tools.  I find having a good pair of pruning shears and a folding saw allows me to make 90% of the necessary cuts.  We each need to have at least one of these two tools, which can be found at Eagle Crest Nursery or at hardware stores.  Any larger limbs we need to take out can be handled by the hand-operated chain saw, which I'll bring.

If you would like to take home some pruned branches with many fruit buds on them, get your heavy vases out, and bring your Swiss Army Knife and a handful of rubber bands to prepare the branches for indoor blooming.  I'll be thrilled to show you how easy it is to do.

Please wear shoes or boots with "gentle" soles, such as Sorels or sneakers, to avoid damaging the trees' bark when climbing on it, and bring work gloves to protect your hands.

Thank you!

Pruning Workshop, Saturday April 7, 2012

I feel a little "piggy", having pruned only my backyard trees so far this Winter, and having the "Winter Blossoms" all to myself!  The buds haven't opened up yet on the trees, in spite of this early warm and dry spell, so anything we prune can still be forced to blossom indoors.

Which brings me to the point, pruning fruit trees!  I will host a pruning (live wood) and trimming (dead wood) workshop on Saturday, April 7, from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm, at the Emma Schoolhouse, and across the highway at the Emma Townsite. Let's just meet at the Emma Schoolhouse, and we'll split up into crews from there.

Bring work gloves, pruning shears, loppers, hand saw, jacknife, and pieces of string or ribbon for tying up your branches to force blossoms at home, if you want to try that.  If you have a good ladder and you can haul it, please feel free to bring it.  If you are comfortable climbing trees, please make sure the tree is comfortable having you climb, by wearing gentle-soled shoes (no Vibram-soled hiking boots on the bark, please).  See the links on the right for examples of high quality tools, most of which can be found locally at Eagle Crest Nursery in El Jebel.  Also peruse the pruning training videos if you like, to brush up on techniques.

I hope to see you out there!
MT

Fruit Thinning - Spring 2011

It appears we are going to have another bumper crop of Apples, Pears, Plums and Cherries this year, on all the Heritage Fruit Trees in our valley!  An experiment we did on one of the apple trees in Emma back in 2009, by thinning the fruit as soon as it forms after the blossoms are done, resulted in a fairly significant harvest in 2010, an off-year for all the trees around it.

This Spring, since we did very little winter pruning of branches, and since we have a bumper crop of blossoms, we'd like to propose that our Heritage Fruit Tree adopters visit their trees after the blossoms are done, which should be the first or second weekend in June, and remove about half of the small fruits, leaving no more than 3 small fruits per cluster on apple branches, or what looks like half the fruit on any other species.  This allows you to select the healthiest looking fruit for the tree to finish, and remove the fruits that appear stunted or weak.  Of course, you'll also be removing some healthy looking fruit, but the results will be worth it.
You should experience a crop of larger and juicier fruit this autumn, and you should see another crop next year, when trees whose fruit has not been thinned will have almost no fruit at all.
I'm planning to be at the Happy Day Ranch orchard in Emma on Saturday, June 11, and on Mary Lou Zordel's orchard on Sunday, June 12, to show adopters how to thin their fruit to achieve these results.
There will be no class and no fee, just some tree climbing and fruit thinning, so please join us if you want to experience this method of adjusting one of Mother Nature's trees to produce every year.

Fruit Tree Pruning Classes - SPRING 2010

Saturday April 17: Michael Bair Residence, 829 Frying Pan Rd, Basalt;
9:00 am - 3:00 pm;
$30 per person / 20 person limit
Download "Google Earth" placemark for Michael Bair's house!

BYO-Bag Lunch
Saturday May 1:  Sustainable Settings Ranch, Carbondale CO:
9:00 am - 3:00 pm;
$30 per person / 20 person limit
BYO-Bag Lunch

Bring pruning shears, folding saw, ladder if you have them, and work gloves.  See sidebars to right for great examples of tools, most of them available at all our local nurseries and hardware stores.

Emma Townsite Orchard

Here is an example of our Heritage Fruit Tree Survey, this one for the Old Emma Townsite, which is owned by Pitkin County Open Space & Trails.  If you download the PDF file in the link below, you can click on any numbered tree on the map, and jump to a page detailing that tree.  Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD EMMA TOWNSITE FRUIT TREE SURVEY

Autumn 2009 - Apple Harvest Schedule

It's harvest time, and there's a bumper crop of apples in Basalt and Emma. I've set a schedule for my cider press to be at the following orchards / places / dates:

Saturday Oct. 3: Billy Grange Ranch, Basalt;
Sunday Oct. 4: Happy Day Ranch, Emma;

Sunday Oct. 11: Mary Lou Zordel Ranch, Emma;

Monday-Wednesday Oct. 12-14: Sustainable Settings, Carbondale

Saturday Oct. 17: Billy Grange Ranch, Basalt
Sunday Oct. 18: Mary Lou Zordel Orchard, Emma

Saturday Oct. 24: MT's House, i24 E. Sopris Drive, Basalt;
Sunday Oct. 25: MT's House, i24 E. Sopris Drive, Basalt;

Hand Chainsaw!

Everyone liked my "hand-chainsaw" so much I thought I'd post the link to where you can purchase one of your own (you must call them to order - 800-249-9185):

Green Mountain Products, Inc.