100 Year Old Gravensteins

Hi Folks, been outside enjoying our spring-like weather. Its been sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny, well you get the point. Typical for Portland this time of year, so I've been told.

In my travels around Mt. Tabor, a bit of a hill just east of where we live, as I was huffing up on my bike, I chanced to look to the side as I was passing this old house. Well, what was in front of the house but these crazy, gnarled, clearly very old...... apple trees. I almost went by, but then felt the obligation to share the experience on this newly created fruit blog, so take a look. 100 year old Gravensteins, standard of course, from the original farm dating back to 1903. Take faith people, even these trees are still bearing fruit! Look at the trunks of these things. There is nothing there! So these are the official mascots for Fruitful Labor. Tenacious, old, fruitful, and a little worn out, but still keeping on. I love it!!

I thought talking about planting a fruit tree might be a good subject, but for most of us, that season is just about over. The Dormant season, is what I am talking about, where the leaves are off the tree and they are just sticks. Well dormant is a little bit of a misnomer. The tree is dormant above ground, but below ground, unless you freeze solid, is ablaze in activity of new root growth. Feeder roots, the roots that provide water and nourishment for the tree, extend well beyond the edge of the canopy, or drip line (that farthest point from the trunk where water would drip off the leaves). Some sources say feeder roots are found up to 4 times the radius of the drip line! I once worked on an orchard where every year they ripped the isles between the rows of trees. Ripping is using a tractor to pull an implement with large bars up to 3 ft in length through the soil, like a big comb. Ripping the soil loosens hard pan, tractor pan, and as they say in the ag business 'tight' soils. Well this orchard never produced fruit, or very little. This was because they were ripping out the feeder roots every year with the tractor. The year they stopped ripping the orchard, fruit started appearing on the trees. The trees could now feed the little growing embryos of forming fruit.

Feeding fruit trees in important to maintain fruit production. This being the Active Season for tree roots, is a great time to fertilize, mulch, and encourage root growth. The first 5 years of tree growth are critical to proper fruit tree development. Like a child, all the naughty habits are learned then. The first 5 years should see rapid and lots of growth, development of tree structure, which I will talk about in later blogs, and forming of scaffold limbs. After 5 years, tree maintenance is mostly about keeping the height in check, maintaining fruit buds, and long term nourishment of the tree.