Today in the orchard
The nail apron and the plums, July 10, 2025
I spent much of today inventorying the nursery and updating our records. It’s a time-consuming task, but always worth the effort. Some tags fade. Some blow away in the winter winds. Some never got tagged in the first place. Some grafts didn’t take. Some did really well. All this information should be documented. So I put down the scythe and the shovel at least once or twice a season and get down on my knees with a clipboard and a bunch of paper and pencils.
We also began to thin the plums. The plum crop (knock on wood) could be one of the best in recent years. There are gazillions on the trees, so many that the branches are already in danger of breaking. We put on cloth nail aprons from the lumber yard and then pinch-off any of the small green plums that are touching one another. When the plums are allowed to touch one another, they often gets brown rot which ruins them. Less fruit also puts less strain on the tree branches. The little plums will eventually go into the compost. On some branches, we removed nearly 3/4 of the fruit. It seems extreme, but even after thinning, the trees are loaded. We’ll thin all the plum trees over the next couple days and then hit the apples. It’s thinning time.
Before
After
