May 11, 2025

Today in the orchard

Topworking seedlings with Rebecca, Finley Lane, May 11, 2025 

The bark is finally starting to slip in central Maine, so we have begun topworking in the orchard. It has been delayed this year by the cold weather. We did our first grafts today, although I could tell that it will be better in another day or two. A year ago we could easily slide in the scions on May 8. This year the best topworking should be on May 13 or 14, almost a full week later. The season is not long so it’s time get out your knife and scionwood and go for it. A few friends and neighbors came over for a lesson—it being Sunday—and we had a productive “class.” In our Finley Lane orchard we have hundreds of seedlings, and I set them loose to practice their knife-work on them. It’s nice to see sharp knives being put to good use. We will do the bulk of our topworking midweek.

Seth the neighborhood beekeeper stopped by to check his hives. The bees are doing well. They are already making honey, and we sampled a couple of finger-fulls.  It was delicious. He’ll be dividing hives in the next few days.     

May 10, 2025

Today in the orchard

Today we had one of those all-day soaking rains of over an inch - great for watering the thousands of young trees that have been transplanted throughout the state in recent days.  Thank you clouds!  As a result, there was definitely a lot happening in the orchard today though none of it had anything to do with us. It was mostly about happy roots. We just watched from the window as the world turned green. Although many of the trees are still looking rather barren, some—like the poplars—are almost entirely leafed out. Tomorrow sun is predicted, and topworking will begin.

John and Vernon LeCount with the first two shovelfuls at the site of the Maine Heritage Orchard, August 6, 2013

On Wednesday, May 21, from 5-7 PM there will be a celebration of the Maine Heritage Orchard in Unity. Both Cammy and I will be there, and we hope that you will as well. It’s free, but MOFGA wants you to register.  Here’s the link. Please join us if you can.

May 9, 2025

Today in the orchard

Lining out the newly grafted trees

Today was overcast and cool, perfect weather for transplanting young grafted trees into the nursery.  Skylar, Cammy and I planted about 220 of them 12” apart in three rows. We have one more row to plant, and they’ll all be in the ground. It’s a team effort: we dug a trench about a foot deep and a foot wide, then add compost and some balanced chicken-manure based fertilizer. Once the trench was prepped, Cammy planted, I came along behind her and dragged the soil back in around the trees and Skylar followed and smoothed out the soil, creating a small “dip” around each tree so the water will soak in rather than run off. 

May 8, 2025

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. 

May 7, 2025

Today in the orchard

Skylar and Taterhouse tree (look closely)

A few drops of rain today but mostly overcast and dry.  Cammy planted the onions into the main garden. Skylar explored the rootcellar for good storage apples. She’s learning to read my handwriting and weird abbreviations on the dozens of miscellaneous bags. In the afternoon we planted an apple tree out in the ‘BRC’ orchard that is referred to by some as ‘Jurassic Park’.  A certain amount of bushwhacking is required before doing any planting. We were able to bushwhack sufficiently to plant a small but well-rooted tree of Taterhouse.  Taterhouse is a seedling discovered by friends in Aroostook County. The fruit is large, oblate, purple-red in color and excellent fresh eating.  We almost lost it to fireblight a few years ago, but I was able to snag one puny piece of scionwood out of the remnants and graft a couple trees.  Now it will live on to see another day.

The birds are descending upon the farm in delightful diversity. We see new species everyday now.  Yesterday Redwing Blackbirds, a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird and even a Bobolink.  Lots more native plants in bloom, and  more coming daily.       

May 6, 2025

Today in the orchard

The rain was back with a vengeance. It was a good day to sit at the desk and make spray plans for the coming weeks. We also spent a couple of hours sorting through apples in the rootcellar. It’s an annual May event that always yields a great deal of roughage for the compost pile along with a few interesting discoveries of cultivars that keep really well (or do not.) Some of the apples that have been down there for over six months are still usable. The Redfields are gone by; their annual limit is about April 15. The Ashmead’s Kernel are shriveled but haven’t rotted. The Ben Davis (of course) look perfect. The Northern Spys are about 50-50; they weren’t that good this year. The Rox and Box (Roxbury Russet and Black Oxford) as mentioned a few days ago, look great. In the next few days, I’ll report on the other superior keepers. 

Mettais, Palermo, May 6, 2025

One cultivar that kept beautifully is Mettais, a French bittersweet cider apple that I’ve been observing for the past couple of years. It has been producing really well for us. It ripens late making it perfect for those post-Cider Days November pressings. The flavor and texture are quintessential cider. Cammy described it as “pecan pie, butterscotch, very bitter, some slight astringency, some tartness though not sharp, more sweet than acid. Some cottony, some juiciness.”

We still have a few cider apple trees for sale. If interested, be in touch ASAP. 

May 5, 2025

Today in the orchard

It was a welcome change to have no rain for an entire day.  I’d forgotten what sun looked like, although there wasn’t much of that either. It was mostly cloudy. I dug what may be the last trees of the season.  Laura Sieger came over as I was finishing the digging, and we moved a lot more brush into piles to be chipped. Later we sprayed 200 gallons of “Kocide” copper fungicide throughout the orchards.  We hope it will help with fireblight on the apples and pears and brown rot on the plums and peaches. The sprayer behaved pretty well for the first three hours but then stopped working. It took about an hour of ‘studio time” to get it operating again, and we completed the spray as it was getting dark. 

Amelanchier, Palermo, May 5, 2025

Many more woody plants are now in bloom, including the Amelanchier (aka Juneberry, Serviceberry, Shadbush, etc.). I absolutely love the juxtaposition of the white flowers and the orange-tan foliage. It gives me shivers! The plums will be in bloom within the next few days. Some of the earliest apples are showing a little ‘pink,’ meaning bloom is not far away.     

May 4, 2025

Today in the orchard

The rain continued off and on all day. In between the drops I was able to get the sprayer working and gather more prunings for chipping. I also began to put together this year’s topworking plan. Every year we topwork (graft) multiple selections directly onto seedlings that sprout in the tree rows in the orchard or onto varieties deemed no longer necessary for us to be growing.  We’ll topwork about thirty varieties into the orchard this year.  

Black Oxford and Roxbury Russet, (BOX and ROX) May 4, 2025

I made apple sauce in the evening. I still make it a couple times a week and will do so right into June. Most of the varieties in the root cellar are now gone-by, but two of our favorites are still in great shape - Black Oxford and Roxbury Russet. Both are still firm and tasty and cook up magnificently into sauce. If you’re looking for the best winter keepers, you won’t go wrong with either of them.  

May 3, 2025

Today in the orchard

I finally received the parts to repair the sprayer, but with the rain yesterday, today and predicted for tomorrow, I won’t be spraying until at least Monday. Not that I love spraying, but it’s spray-season now. Instead I planted a ‘Zachary’ apple tree up the road at a neighbor’s. It’s a big tree that needed to find a home. Zachary may not be the correct name, but for now it’s the best I’ve been able to do. The dark red, all-purpose, winter apple has become a favorite of mine and one that I’ve written about on several occasions. We’ve found it in multiple locations in central ME, mostly in Belgrade and surrounding towns. I also planted two ‘Alpha’ (aka Alfa?) grapes along the grape arbor. I was given the cuttings by Scott Skogerboe of CO a year ago. The cultivar was, as I recall, selected by Louis Suelter in MN in about 1870. I don’t know much about Alpha except that it is related to the better-known, hardy selection, Beta. Alpha is all but extinct. I was able to root several plants from the cuttings and will spread it around so it will not be lost. Anyone interested in planting it out, let us know.

When the planting was done, I continued to gather apple prunings into massive piles in preparation for chipping later this month. We’ll have a lot of chips to spread around the farm this spring. I burned the remnants of last January’s Wassail fire and cleaned up the Wassail area. The rain kept the fire contained and kept me hydrated from head to toe.

Another sign of spring - the dandelions are starting to bloom.

May 2, 2025

Today in the orchard

The Drap d’Or de Bretagne tree and Todd Little-Siebold on Verona Island, February 2024.

More tree planting today. This time in our neighbor’s orchard that dates from about 1900. Most of the original trees planted by his grandparents are gone, but over the years I’ve supplied him with young trees to fill in the gaps.  There are now a number of important local historic cultivars in amongst the Baldwins and Ben Davis. All the cultivars we’ve planted date from before 1900. The most noteworthy tree in this year’s planting would be the Drap d’Or de Bretagne. It’s been gaining a lot of attention lately and rightfully so. It was a great discovery that has helped fill in another piece of the puzzle of how the apple found its way to North America.  Kudos to everyone involved. 

During the middle of the day I attended an apple meeting via zoom, and Skylar continued her work on creating “passports” for all the trees in the Maine Heritage Orchard (MHO). The most important task at MHO is maintaining the trees, since they are an irreplaceable living history library. But documentation of the collection comes in a close second for importance. Keeping accurate records of each tree’s origin, DNA profile results, fruit description and observations requires a lot of time. Having the information in our heads (as we do) is not very communicable. Writing it down is time consuming but critical. We call this the tree’s “Passport.” Each tree in the MHO will have one. Fortunately we have Skylar to help us this spring.      

May Day, 2025

Today in the orchard

Planters of the world, unite!

We did plant the trees

Many hands did make light work

Someday we’ll all pick

April 30, 2025

Today in the orchard

Today was cool and very windy. Skylar and I planted more trees in the Finley Lane orchard. Laura Sieger joined us for part of the day, and the three of us hooked up the sprayer which is always a challenge. Following Tree-Digging Season comes Spray Season.

We planted four trees today: 

• Avon Calling: Laura and I discovered it by the roadside in Avon, ME, just north of Farmington in 2016. It’s small-medium (5-6.5cm), yellow, cottony, bitter, astringent, sharp and has potential for cider. We have an older tree that is already bearing in the orchard. We like it.

• Dandeneau seedling: This was selected by Skylar from one of our older seedling beds. It hasn’t fruited yet so who knows??. Dandeneau (the mother) is a favorite selection of Steve Gougeon. No name yet. (Danny Boy?)

• Blue Wolf red-leafed seedling: Another seedling from the same nursery bed. The mother is the Rocky Ground selection, Blue Wolf. The other parent is one of our red-leafed apples though we don’t know which one. No name for this one yet either (Dyer Wolf?)

• Suite Eleven: I first saw the beautiful, dark purple-black fruit at the 2014 Great Maine Apple Day. When I visited the tall, skinny tree growing between buildings in the back streets of Portland, ME, I parked illegally nearby in the parking spot for “Suite 11.” Hence the name. A sweet eleven years later we’re finally planting a tree of our own.

April 29, 2025

Today in the orchard

Mike, John and Jeff planting apple tree at the Blaine House, April 29, 2025

This was the warmest day so far in 2025. I took three apple trees to the Governor’s residence, the Blaine House, in Augusta and planted them in the small Maine apple orchard we’ve been creating over the past few years. The goal is to have 16 apple trees, one representing each county of the state. Today it was Lincoln, Penobscot and Somerset Counties. Thirteen down and three more counties to go. I was assisted by Jeff and Mike who work at the Blaine House for Governor Mills. The three of us planted Sasanoa (Lincoln County), Royal Sweet (Penobscot County) and Gray Pearmain (Somerset County). In the next year or two we’ll complete the collection. Having an orchard of Maine varieties in Augusta at the Governor’s house is just one more way that apples connect us around the state and around the world.

Gray Pearmain likely originated in Skowhegan. It is an excellent dessert (fresh eating) apple that actually tastes like a pear. It was introduced to me by Steve and Marilyn Meyerhans of The Apple Farm on the Skowhegan-Fairfield line. It was introduced to them by Royal Wentworth who owned the orchard before them. It has become a popular variety in a number of orchards and backyards around the state and beyond.

The Royal Sweet scionwood came from a spectacular, massive, old tree growing at Rollins Orchard in Garland. It is one of the largest apple trees in Maine. The Rollins specimen may be the original tree of the variety. The fruit itself is a true ‘sweet’ (low-acid) apple that ripens in late summer. It was introduced to me by Ernest Rollins. In October 1894 Royal Sweet apples were submitted to the USDA watercolor project by J.M. Stone of Garland. It is likely those apples came from this tree. 

Sasanoa is from near “the Basin” in Phippsburg, south of Bath. DNA shows it matches the famous winter cooking variety, Rhode Island Greening, making it apparently a local coastal Maine sport (mutation) of the original ‘RIG’. Unlike RIG, the skin is electric green and russet. The same apple grows only a few miles away as the crow flies in Boothbay. The name was coined by Barry Rodrigue who found the ancient tree and introduced it to me.

April 28, 2025

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.    

April 26, 2025

Today in the orchard

Green again

Today we got an all-day April shower, more than an inch and a half. The ducks loved it. The plants too. We took the opportunity to celebrate Beltane with a few good friends. Beltane is an ancient Celtic celebration of the beginning of summer, usually held on about May 1, halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Most years we sit around an outdoor fire and share thoughts and readings, then retire after dark to the dining table for a late potluck supper. This year the rain kept us indoors but it was still a perfect evening to celebrate spring. The readings were excellent and the company, the best. Here’s brief reading from the evening:

“We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states. Except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again.”

Rumi

April 25, 2025

Today in the orchard

Amere de Berthecourt 

We continued planting new trees in the Finley Lane Orchard. We planted a second Amere de Berthecourt and a “Jim Martin #11.” Amere de Berthecourt is a French bitter cider apple that has done very well in our orchard. It made sense to plant a second tree. “Jim Martin #11” is an ancient, unidentified apple from an old twenty-tree farm-orchard in Falmouth, ME. Jim Martin grew up on the farm but moved away many years ago. He’s gotten to know the current owners and now has a goal of replicating the orchard at his home in western Maine. Over the past few years I’ve been grafting everything he’s got. The orchard wraps around the large, stately farmhouse. #11 is one of the oldest and the most interesting of the trees. It is probably a seedling. The fruit is medium-sized, oval, light-pink striped and unlike any I’ve seen in Maine. I think it will be valuable as a cider or culinary cultivar. This afternoon Skylar and Cammy took off all the remaining spiral tree guards - HOORAY. These are the protective sleeves we wrap around the tree trunks to protect them from voles. We take them all off in spring. If left on they attract the dreaded apple tree borer.      

April 24, 2025

Today in the orchard

Nettles and daffodils

Spring is changing so fast it’s beginning to feel like we’re in a canoe going down class 10 rapids. (Is there such a thing?) Today marks the beginning of nettles season (Urtica dioica). Nettles are often maligned but, I think, for no good reason. You just need to know where to plant them. We keep them far away from the vegetable garden. We plant them out in the orchards and just let them do their thing. They love to have lots of room to move. We have enough to feed an army and still have a lot left to dry and make tea for the winter. They improve the soil and are delicious steamed like spinach. In fact, I think they’re better than spinach. They do “sting” so we pick them with gloves. Many of the daffodils are also now blooming.       

April 23, 2025

Today in the orchard

LWB-15, Wantage NJ (Photo by M.Clifford)

Skylar and I planted several more trees in the Finley Lane orchard. One of them was from scionwood collected by Michael Clifford in Wantage, NJ. Michael is an avid historic-apple explorer in the mid-Atlantic states. I first got to know him because his grandmother lives only a few miles away from us here in Maine. The tree we planted is currently unidentified, and Michael refers to it as LWB-15. According to him, the ancient tree produces a “small yellow conical apple with red blush, medium length stem, and russet lenticels that ripens in NJ around October 1. The taste is very aromatic, almost pear-like, and it's high in sugar. I know of a few locally grown apples that fit the profile and age of the tree. There was a slightly younger Tolman Sweet in the same orchard, but every other tree was a Campfield, so high chance it's a cider variety.”

Michael sent us scionwood again this spring for several more of his discoveries. I grafted them a couple weeks ago and will keep them here as a backup for his collection. It’s heartening to see that there are still ancient apple trees in the more developed areas of the East Coast. If you know of really old apple trees in the land of the Burbs, please don’t cut them down!

Today was the first day we were visited by the diving and swooping tree swallows who seemed delighted to be checking out the bird houses. They’ll move in soon. I think of them as the orcas of the sky. It was also the first day of Coltsfoot bloom. Spring! 

April 21, 2025

Today in the orchard

It was Patriot’s Day - a Massachusetts holiday of Revolutionary War re-enactments, parades of Minute Men, and the running of the Boston marathon. So how appropriate that Cammy and I found ourselves in Concord. We were there to visit an old, unidentified apple tree at the Concord Museum. The museum is on the site of the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The solo apple tree probably dates from about 1900, making it old enough to be of historic interest, but probably not dating from the time of Emerson and Thoreau. Several members of the museum staff and a few volunteers met with us, and we spent about an hour with the tree discussing various options for the tree. It’s definitely old and doesn’t have many more years. There are a couple of large sections of dead wood that could be pruned off, but at this point it might be best to leave them. The dead limbs may even be helping to keep the tree in balance. If you remove the weight from one side, the next thing you know, the tree could tip over in the other direction.  

Concord Museum staff and volunteers

Several weeks ago I had grafted a few replacements for the tree from scionwood collected and sent to me by local orchardist, Linda Hoffman. There are now ten young grafted trees growing in a bucket next to our masonry heater. We will set them out in the nursery in a few weeks. We will also do a DNA profile of the tree. That will require sending several fresh young leaves to Washington State University. A DNA test may be able to identify the tree by determining whether it matches one of the thousands of cultivars in the DNA reference panel. In the fall the Museum staff will send us fruit to phenotype (and taste!) 

Everyone agreed that the tree deserves to remain. It’s a cool old tree. In November the staff will fertilize the ground surface under the tree with several wheelbarrow loads of compost. Otherwise, they’ll mostly leave it alone, let enjoy its senior years and be there for the museum-goers to enjoy.

April 20, 2025

Today in the orchard

Peter del Tredici with one of the Burnham Sweet trees

We headed south to Boston with 27 two-year-old “Burnham Sweet” apple trees, individually wrapped with damp sawdust and ‘pallet-wrap’. Burnham Sweet is an heirloom, winter-keeping apple, named in honor of Oliver Burnham, an officer in the American Revolution and local hero of Cornwall, CT. The tree was introduced to us by Peter del Tredici, former director of the Arnold Arboretum and summer resident of Cornwall. Peter was able to find one or two puny scionwood sticks from the ancient tree and sent them to us in 2020. From those we were able to graft one tree. That tree produced the scionwood we used for the twenty-seven trees. We dropped the trees off with Peter who will take them back to Cornwall where they will be sold to local residents. The project will raise awareness of local historic agriculture, save another rare variety, reintroduce it to its town of origin and raise funds to support the library, all at the same time. Meanwhile the old Cornwall tree has broken apart and won’t be around much longer. Another victory for historic apple preservation!