Today in the orchard
First ‘Red Tip’ leaves Finley Lane April 2025
It warmed up today like it was time for big-time growing to begin. Even the trees are about to—as Rumi put it— “recall being green again.” Unlike us, however, the trees have not “forgotten [their] former states.” They know what it’s like to be green, and they love it. So I hustled down to Finley Lane with my clipboard and cataloged the trees and their leaf-emergence progress. The overall assessment is that we are not yet at “quarter-inch green.” Quarter inch green is when the young leaves are—you got it—a quarter inch in size. Right now about a third are still dormant, about a third are just beginning to show green (call it 1/8”) and about a third are a quarter or more. Some are putting on serious growth, actually approaching 1/2”. These include several of the red-leafed apples such as Redford, Redfield, Oporto and Hatchet Mountain. Of the green-leafed cultivars, the early ones include Bastian Crab, Hewe’s Virginia Crab, Novosibirski, Trailman and Transcendent Crab. Our two Malus ioensis, Kola and Red Tip, are also leafing out early.
Friends came to visit late in the day, and we were comfortable sitting out on the lawn until nearly dark. Before they left this morning they picked nettles to take home to dry for next winter’s tea.
