June 11, 2025

Today in the orchard

Squash in the UK, November 2024. Wow!

Adjacent to our Finley Lane orchard is our nursery. It is there that we plant our newly grafted trees and our young seedlings. They spend their “formative” years—usually 2 or 3—in the Nursery before being transplanted to the orchard, sold or given away. The Nursery is about a half acre and has enough room that we can rotate our trees around. We don’t want to grow the young trees in the same soil year after year. So we grow them in one spot until ready to dig. Then, once we clear out that section, we rotate in other crops. Typically we plant garlic one year and potatoes the next. Then we plant young nursery trees again.  The Nursery is a good spot to plant our breeding-project pepper plants. We plant them there to keep them isolated from our other peppers as they cross-pollinate easily.

We often have bits of other free space as well. Since “nature abhors a vacuum”, we fill it in with more plants. Last year it was wheat. This year we’re planting some unusual  squash, pumpkins and melons. Today I spent several hours clearing out the weeds from our new patch and turning over the soil—all by hand. The weeds were about three feet tall so it was a lot of work. By day’s end the bed looked almost ready to go. We’ll do a few finishing touches tomorrow and plant on Friday.     

June 10, 2025

Today in the orchard

Blackberries in bloom, June 10, 2025

The blackberries are now in bloom. Last year we had an excellent crop, and this year looks as though it might be just as good. Years ago I researched “hardy” blackberry cultivars. It was impossible to find any in the nursery trade. I tried a few and was always disappointed. I’d wind up with thorny, poorly-producing blackberry ground-cover. The worst.     

In the late 1990’s, a friend and mentor from Fort Kent, ME, Garfield King, discovered a patch at an old farm site in southern Aroostook County and began to cultivate them. We sold these plants through Fedco for many years which we called “Fort Kent King.” We established a small patch here at Super Chilly Farm. The berries were large, and the quality was good. The porcupines were big fans of the Fort Kent King and sought them out amongst all the blackberries on the farm every summer. Sadly our planting was never super happy and died back over the years.

The local population of blackberries, however, has established itself around the farm, and the berries are quite acceptable. They are not nearly as large-fruited as the commercial cultivars (or Fort Kent King for that matter), but they are vigorous, hardy and productive. We thin out some of the canes during the winter. Otherwise they become so dense (and intense) we can’t get to them. They produce good berries and, on a year like last year, we can pick an almost endless crop. They are thorny as all get-out, but what’s a few thorns, now and then when the rewards are so delicious?    

June 9, 2025

Today in the orchard

The cool breeze reminds me not to get too cocky about summer’s arrival. It’s still ten days away, and spring is trying her best to get in the last word. It was a very pleasant temperature to be working in the gardens and orchards. The spring planting marathon is coming down the home stretch. Now it’s time to put on that last-minute sprint and get everything in. When the garden is full of plants, the assortment of new perennials have been transplanted here and there in the orchards and the trees are looking silver under their dressing of Surround, we’ll breathe a few deep breaths before we begin the summer work.  

Year’s ago I was on a Morris Team. We danced pre-Christian, ritualistic, springtime dances with bells strapped to our ankles. The tunes and occasional shouted lyrics were all traditional (although I did have the audacity to write one for our team.) We sung out in unison, leapt into the air and then clashed our ash sticks: 

“When the spring is sprung and seeds are sown beyond the garden gate,

The scythe is hanging in the barn while the patient farmer waits!”

Comfrey in bloom with Bombus sp., June 9, 2025

Bumble bees (Bombus spp) were out feasting on Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) pollen all day today. There are 17 different Bumble bee species here in Maine. (Who’d have thought?) I don’t know which ones we have, but they always seem to be around. The Comfrey bloom is a reminder that it is approaching time to take the old, apple-handled scythe down off the wall in the barn and make compost. Comfrey leaves and stems make some of the best. Never put the roots in the compost, however, or you’ll have Comfrey growing across every inch of your garden.

June 8, 2025

Today in the orchard

Tour group at the Maine Heritage Orchard, June 8, 2025

The sun came out, and the trees were happy. So were the people who rushed outside to soak in the rays. I traveled up to the Maine Heritage Orchard in Unity for a tour and picnic. It was a perfect day to share the orchard with an enthusiastic group of supporters. 

Back in our orchards the last of the late-bloomers are still flowering. The plum curculios are lurking in the sidelines, ready to attack as the temperatures rise. We’ll spray Surround again in a day or two.  Codling moth (Cydia pomonella) is the next threat to the crop, but we won’t need to deal with them for another week or so. Everywhere around the farm one plant is flowering and then another. The Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) is now in full bloom.  

With the Merlin app (merlin.allaboutbirds.org), we’re discovering that we’re living in an avian sanctuary. We knew we had a lot of birds that were too shy to come to the feeders, but we didn’t know the extent of who’s nesting on the farm. The app can identify the birds from their calls, even if they’re hiding in the woods and we can’t see them. Today we woke up to a Red-eyed Vireo which announced its arrival at Super Chilly Fartm by serenading us with its complex song all day long. It’s gratifying to think that the farm is so welcoming to birds. We need an app that can ID apples from their calls!

June 7 2025

Today in the orchard

I began the task of moving the chipped-up brush to the trees. Alyssa Gavlik helped me spread several loads around the base of the young trees in the BRC orchard. The light rain felt good after the intense heat of the past two days. Meanwhile Cammy planted peppers in one of the hoop houses. Maintaining soil moisture in the hoops is an annual challenge. Taking off the plastic for the winter to let in moisture is a good solution except that we hate having to purchase new plastic in the spring. Maybe it’s time to build a glass greenhouse with a retractable roof... 

Nettles in the news

The spinach and lettuce in the larger hoop house will soon be pulled out so we can plant the tomatoes in their place. In the orchard the nettles are now going to flower. There appears to be some consensus that you should harvest leaves for tea before the plants flower. Once they flower the tea will supposedly be stronger and more bitter. We’ve been harvesting nettles for the past month. We rinse the leaves in a large bowl, dry them in a salad spinner and lay them out on newspaper or on our herb-drying screen above the wood stove. Once they’re rinsed, I find them easy to handle without gloves.

June 6, 2025

Today in the orchard

It was hot again though not as hot as yesterday. We chipped brush and prunings for a second day. We now have several large piles of chips to show for it. We’ll spread them around the apple trees in the coming days where they will suppress weeds, help maintain soil moisture, and feed the trees and soil microbes for the next decade or two. Then next year we'll chip again.

The very late-blooming apple cultivars are, amazingly, still in bloom, although the earliest of the late-bloomers are beginning to fade. Bloom should be officially over within the next week.  

In the evening we had a rather robust thunderstorm that dropped an inch of rain in a couple of hours. I’m not sure we needed it, but we have soil that absorbs water well and a lot of trees that love to make good use of it.   

An apprentice who survived half a day of chipping atop a chip pile.

June 5, 2025

Today in the orchard

Lupines (Lupinus polyphyllus)

Today was the hottest day we’ve had in 2025, maybe in the 90’s, so of course it was the day we decided to chip brush. This is the job that every apprentice anticipates with great enthusiasm. What could be more fun than grinding tree limbs into tiny bits using a big machine? Their excitement diminishes rapidly when they realize that chipping is dirty, tough, loud and exhausting under any conditions, and even more so when the temperatures go up. No apprentice has ever voluntarily returned for a second day, and a few have told us that it was their least favorite day of the season. But despite our age and ailments, we persevered (with a little help from Marc) and chipped up a massive amount of prunings. We prefer not to leave all the pruned branches in piles or even scattered around to rot. We know other orchardists who have done so and wound up with fungal diseases in their orchards. Since we don’t want to burn the wood or cart it to the dump, we borrow a big chipper from our neighbor to chip up the fruit tree prunings and brush we’ve cleared along the edges of the farm. Then we spread the chips back around the trees as mulch and future fertilizer. It’s a good system. The trees and gardens love the mulch. But it does require a powerful chipper and a intense and grueling couple of days. 

We saw our first lupine flowers (Lupinus polyphyllus) yesterday. Lupinus polyphyllus has become a beautiful addition to the Maine landscape but one that has a complicated relationship with the native ecology. In some areas it’s considered unwanted and invasive. (Oh, the things that humans set in motion.) Lastly, a rose-breasted grosbeak came to the feeder this morning. What an amazing song!.   

June 4, 2025

Today in the orchard

The crew from the Ecdysis Foundation

It was hazy and warm today in the orchard. A group of agricultural researchers from the Ecdysis Foundation in South Dakota came to visit today. There were nine of them, including entomologists, soil scientists and an ornithologist. They spent the morning up in the Finley Lane orchard counting bugs, taking soil samples and listening for birds (I think he said he counted eight different warblers.) They visit farms across the US, make detailed observations and then assess different agricultural practices in an effort to determine which ones (if any) could be adopted by other farmers as we attempt to invent a new agriculture for the 21st century. It was fun to show them around and then watch them go to work. They’ll send us their findings in a few months. Hopefully something we’re doing at SCF can be of use to others.

Later in the day I cut nettles and set it on screens to dry. We drink lots of nettle tea in the winter. We probably have enough nettles out in the BRC orchard to start a business making nettle tea.

During the evenings lately we’ve been serenaded by several thousand frogs that spend their warm season in and around the ponds and wetlands here on the farm. The frogs are probably at least a few decibels louder than the Grateful Dead on a wild night in San Francisco in 1968 (the good ol’ days). And yet, they don’t seem to keep us from nodding off. Green noise. 

June 3, 2025

Today in the orchard

Atheline Wilbur, June 2, 2025.

The temperature was 35F at 6 AM for the second morning in a row. That’s cutting it close but caused no problems. It was Jack Frost’s last gasp for the spring I suspect. We’ll see him back in three months. He’s heading off to pester the Tasmanians. We had a busy day in the orchards today. Up at the Nursery we planted two long rows of potatoes in the spot where we dug the nursery trees earlier this spring. Later Skylar and I transplanted Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) from the blueberry terrace to the BRC orchard where it can spread freely and form its own happy colony. Some people call it “invasive”, but when the Tansy’s in bloom, the flowers are host to a multitude of insects. We cultivated around the grapes that are beginning to grow up nearby maple trees (Acer rubrum) and fertilized them with compost. Meanwhile Cammy planted out corn seedlings in the big garden. At the end of the day Laura and I sprayed the plums, cherries and peaches with Surround and Regalia. Regalia is a biofungicide made of Knotweed (!) that works by helping the plant to boost its own resistance to whatever annoys it next.  After completing the spraying, I took a few minutes to fill up the tractor bucket with firewood from down at the south end of the orchard and contemplate the universe before heading home. The air, the breeze, the sky, the orchard: it was all pretty close to perfect. Maybe it was.

I guess I haven’t yet said goodbye to lilacs for the year. Maybe tomorrow. For now I’ll tell you about one other favorite. I’ve never liked the color pink too much but occasionally there comes along a pink that is hard not to adore. To my eye, Atheline Wilbur is the epitome of that pink. I love it.    

June 2, 2025

Today in the orchard

It was mostly clear and dry today and finally starting to warm up.  If you listen carefully you can hear the plants chanting in a low rumble, “heat…heat…heat…heat…” It’s building to a crescendo. The onions, especially, are about to blurt out “IT’S TIME FOR SOME HEAT!”  The apples could use it too. So could the plum curculios. The poor little guys are shivering in their shells in the woody forest duff. Plum Curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar) is a weevil that winters in the woods of Maine and feeds on small fruit. They particularly relish small plums and apples (c. 6mm). They also need heat to motivate, so although the fruits are approaching the perfect size, we haven’t seen evidence of the “Curcs” yet. The telltale sign is a “crescent moon-shaped” scar on the surface of the tiny fruit. On a “good” curc year, the apple and plum crops can be devastated. The affected fruit typically drops to the ground at a young age, long before reaching a usable size. Conventional growers use certain pesticides to control the Curc. We use Surround, the refined clay powder. Today we sprayed the apples still in bloom (just a few left) and all those at “petal-fall” (many). It’s a big job but we did it. 

Ludwig Spaeth, June 2, 2025.

Quick word about lilacs before they fade away for another year. I mentioned Ludwig Spaeth the other day. I was out admiring it this evening. What a great color. It’s worth growing if you have a soft spot for Lilacs.

June 1, 2025

Today in the orchard

Before we leave Malus baccata and turn our focus in other directions, let’s look at promising Baccata selections with cider potential. Two of the early twentieth century champions of Malus baccata were the breeders Niels Hansen and Isabella Preston. Hansen was into dessert and culinary selections. Preston was into ornamentals. Both found Baccata to be valuable for their purposes, and both introduced apples that are now being considered for their value as cider apples. Both also made extensive use of Niedzwetzkyana which Hansen found in Kazakhstan and brought back to the US. 

One of Preston’s introductions—Geneva—is a selection of Niedzwetzkyana likely crossed with Baccata. It is red-fleshed, generally available and has been adopted by cider-makers. (We are not currently growing Geneva though we should.) We are currently growing two of Hansen’s Baccata introductions with cider potential: Amsib and Kensib. The “sib” in their names indicates Baccata (ie Siberian Crab) in their parentage. Kensib is 2” and bitter. Amsib is nearly 2” and mild. Hansen also introduced the famous Dolgo which is a seedling of Baccata parentage.

May 31, 2025

Today in the orchard

Rain returned to the farm today. After five dry days, a day of rain was welcome. Even though we’ve had plenty of water this spring, we still appreciate those rainy days. (It gives us an excuse to do other things.) Rain or not, we irrigate our nursery trees and give the newly-planted trees in the orchards about ten gallons each, once a week. Don’t be fooled if they look good. It still takes them a good solid year to get acclimated to their new ‘digs.’

Finley Lane old cellar-hole lilacs, likely 150 years old.

The lilacs are at peak bloom now on the farm. The vulgaris types will be fading over the course of the next week. Then the later shrub species will appear followed by the tree lilacs. We don’t consider ourselves to be experts, but we do have some favorites: Ludwig Spaeth (dark purple) and President Lincoln (blue) are among those at the top of the list. We also love the good ol’ fashioned Common Purple. It’s the one you find around nearly every old abandoned cellar hole in Maine even a century after the last building has melted back into the earth. They are hard to beat.    

May 30, 2025

Today in the orchard

The conversation about frost resistance and apple bloom has been an important one, particularly since the May 18, 2023 freeze when temperatures dropped to well below 32F from Maine to Buffalo. By 4:00 PM the afternoon before, I knew we were in for trouble. The air already had that distinct feeling that meant clear and cold. It is a date that apple growers have etched indelibly in their brains. When you say “May 18” you needn’t say more. So what do we do? As mentioned in yesterday’s orchard report, we have done well on our farm with Black Oxford and Frostbite. What is it about those two cultivars that could have outsmarted mother nature on May 18?

Frostbite is the apple that contributed the crispness to Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisp, SweeTango, SnapDragon and many—or even all—of the other ultra-crisp cultivars. That gene came from Frostbite’s Malus baccata (Siberian Crab) ancestry. It is in that M. baccata ancestry that we may find the key to the cold hardiness of Frostbite that enabled it to produce a nearly-full crop after 22F in bloom. 

Trailman: candy on a tree.

This past spring I was attending an apple roundtable meeting in western MA when one of the other attendees, Amy Miller, talked about the Malus baccata seedlings she was growing in the midwest that had produced full crops after temps plunged well below freezing during bloom. In its native Siberia M. baccata experiences winter temperatures closer to -50F (although not during bloom). It is one hardy crab apple.

The fruit of M. baccata is small. In another recent orchard report we mentioned Sissipuk which has M. baccata in its pedigree. It’s beautiful in bloom and leaf, and the fruit is only about 1/2”. Two of our favorite dessert cultivars—Ivan and Trailman—also have M. baccata ancestry. They are small (2”) but large enough for many growers. There’s nothing lacking in flavor or texture in either of them. They are like candy on a tree. (As E.F. Schumacher famously said, “small is beautiful.”)
For those of you who read MALUS magazine, there’s an excellent article focusing on M. baccata by Andy Brennan in the current issue.  Should we be growing Baccata? Can Baccata play a role in the breeding of future cultivars? We think so. 

May 29, 2025

Today in the orchard

The first wave of bloom—most of the apples we grow—is nearly over, and most are ready (fingers crossed) to set fruit. However, there are lingering flowers here and there, a few trees are still in full bloom, while others are just leafing out. It has been interesting to track the 400+ cultivars and seedling selections we’re growing as they break dormancy. We currently have fifty-five English and French cider apples. Most of them are at petal fall or towards the end of their bloom. Fourteen of them, however, are just beginning to leaf out. That’s 25%. The late bloomers are of concern because their bloom coincides with warmer temperatures which puts them at increased risk of fire blight infection. On the other hand late bloomers are less likely to be hit by frost while in bloom. It’s a trade-off, and sometimes it feels as though it’s a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. We are carefully watching the “late-leafers” this spring as they begin to bloom…just in time for the fire blight warnings on the horizon.

Black Oxford in bloom, May 28, 2025

There’s another group of apples that have long bloom periods. These include two of our favorites: Black Oxford and Frostbite (MN 447). They both seem to bloom forever. Both produced nearly full crops following the terrible May 18, 2023 deep freeze. Two other more recent favorites—the Steve Gougeon selection he calls Dandeneau and the English bittersharp, Skyrmes Kernel—also have long bloom periods. You might think that makes them susceptible to both the freeze and fire blight, but all four seem to finessed the challenges and produced good crops the last few years. 

May 28, 2025

Sissipuk in bloom, May 28, 2025

Today in the orchard

It was warm and sunny for the third day in a row. Laura and I sprayed all the apples still in bloom with Blossom Protect, a yeast-like fungi (Aureobasidium pullulansas )designed to protect the trees from fire blight by inducing the flowers to produce an immune response to the attacking fire blight bacteria. This has become increasingly important as fire blight becomes a big challenge for apple growers in Maine. Conventional growers use antibiotics to prevent fire blight, but now antibiotic-resistant fireblight strains have been found in most apple-growing regions of the US. Blossom Protect seems to be one effective alternative. The upcoming rain and continuing warm temps are the conditions fire blight loves. So we spray. Spraying is also a chance to get a look again at every tree. Many are still in full bloom, and the bloom this year has been fantastic. The Black Oxfords, Frostbites, Gray Pearmain, Kavanagh, Milo Gibson, Sweet Sixteen and Tolman Sweet are the standouts right now.

Today’s featured apple is Sissipuk, selected and named by Isabella Preston in 1930. It is thought to be a cross of Niedzwetzkyana and Malus baccata. The flowers and foliage are at peak right now. The fruit size is small but may still be of value. (We'll find the perfect use.)

May 27, 2025

Today in the orchard

Swarming bees, Finley Lane, May 27, 2025

It was warm and sunny for the second day in a row. The cold weather appears to have damaged some of the flowers, but I think we should get decent pollination. Skylar and I inventoried the bloom on all the trees at Finley Lane. Many trees are flowering for the first time. We also hand-pollinated a second Frostbite tree with pollen collected from Black Oxford, Gray Pearmain and Westfield-Seek-No-Further.

It was a spectacular day in the orchard. The black flies thought so too. There were zillions of them out there keeping us company. With all this rain the streams are flowing with gusto, and flowing water means black flies. It was challenging to think with hundreds of them crawling over our faces. Argh!! The highlight of the day was the swarm of 45,000 bees (or so) that collected on one of the Wickson trees. That was amazing.        

May 26, 2025

Today in the orchard

Lady’s-slipper, BRC, May, 2025

The sun finally emerged, and the rain-rain has gone away and, if we’re lucky, it will not come back until another day, post-bloom. Meanwhile the Pink Lady's-slippers (Cypripedium acaule) have made their annual appearance. We see them in the woods and also in the “BRC” orchard. That’s the orchard that we’ve intentionally allowed to do its own thing. Perhaps as a consequence of our laissez-faire approach, we haven’t scared away all the locals who have been living on this piece of the land for the past few thousand years. (We love our blackberries even if they can be rather aggressive.) Maine has four Lady’s-slippers. We occasionally see the white one though the vast majority of ours—including the ones in the orchard—are the pink.     

May 22, 2025

Today in the orchard

The cold temperatures continued, but the rain held off until evening. Zack Kaiser and Ryan Travers of Absolem Cider in Winthrop came over to dig a couple dozen cider-apple trees to plant at their cidery. Digging season is now officially over. Later Cammy and I hand-pollinated one of two Frostbite trees that I bagged several days ago. We used pollen from Black Oxford, Gray Pearmain and Westfield-Seek-No-Further. I collected more pollen from all three cultivars that I’ll use next week on a second Frostbite tree. A highlight today was seeing a Scarlet Tanager in the Finley Lane Orchard. They are rare and so red.  

“There’s no limit to the things that you can do”, Sun Ra.

We also celebrated Sun Ra’s birthday today by listening to the 24-hour, Sun Ra music extravaganza on WKCR radio. “Somebody else’s idea of things to come need not be the only way to vision the future!”

May 21, 2025

Today in the orchard

John and Sarah Alexander, MOFGA’s Executive Director

The temperatures were in the 40’s throughout central Maine today. It was cold. Laura and I sprayed the stone fruit with Surround in the early morning. Surround is the refined clay powder that “bugs” the plum curculio, the nemesis of the stone fruit (and apples). It irritates them when they attack the tiny developing fruit, causing them to retreat back to the woods from where they reside in the winter. 

The cold temperatures are concerning though their ultimate effect will remain to be seen. It has not been below freezing, just wet and cold. The bees—and the curculios for that matter—are mostly huddled in their sleeping bags. We hope to see the bees in a few days. 

In the late afternoon we went to the Maine Heritage Orchard for a 10th Anniversary Blossom Celebration. I had the honor of giving a few “remarks.” It was inspiring to see so many friends and apple lovers show up to celebrate this milestone and to be recognized for helping to make the orchard a reality. A lot of people care.   

May 20, 2025

Today in the orchard

Ancient apple tree, Brooksville, Maine, May 20, 2025

Skylar and I took a trip to the Blue Hill Peninsula and Verona Island, both in Hancock County, to see old trees. We were not disappointed. In Brooksville we visited Dan and Leslie Paul who showed us several old, unidentified trees dating from the early 20th century, as well as one that looks to be two hundred years old. That tree is among the oldest I’ve seen in Maine and could be of important historic interest. The site is very close to Castine. We took leaves and will submit them for DNA profiling. I’ll also obtain fruit from the tree in the fall. 

We then went to Verona Island and met with Ron and Jeanne Russell and two reporters from Maine Public Radio. We toured the Russell’s assortment of ancient apple trees paying particular attention to the Drap d’Or de Bretagne, one of the most important apple trees discovered in Maine.

On the farm the Asian pears have now dropped their flowers, as have the plums. The early blooming apples are dropping petals too, while most varieties are entering full bloom. The late bloomers are just beginning to leaf out. So far the bloom is one of the best in memory. The temperatures are cold, but the clouds and rain have kept it above freezing.