Today in the orchard
Buckets of young grafted trees, May 8, 2025
No rain today, though they say it will return on Friday night and all day Saturday. Friday will be a perfect day to get things into the ground. Today I completed adjustments to the sprayer to level the tank and raise it a few inches to minimize the chance of it ‘bottoming out’ when we hit low spots. This should be a big improvement as we enter into the heart of spray season.
We’ve been putting the newly grafted apple trees outdoors for the past couple days to harden off. They have been in buckets of damp sawdust—about 40 trees per bucket—in the living room and are now ready to go into a nursery bed. Tomorrow we’ll ‘line them out’ (plant them) about 12” apart in long rows where they’ll live for the next two years before being dug and transplanted to their final homes. This year’s trees include several special orders of rare cultivars as well as trials of apples that friends have bred over the past few years. Some of these may be valuable to future generations.
The plum flowers are opening now. They’ll be in full bloom within the next couple of days.
