So, below are the latest and greatest of our now two year old baby orchard. Overall I am very happy with its progress, and have two trees which I call challenged, which required heading back again this winter, in order to achieve the first flush of growth that would give us our structural branches. One is our Akane, a relatively new variety that only produced a single, long water sprout last year. The other was our Klapp's Favorite Pear, which did the same thing, bearing only moderate, lop-sided new growth. I am happy to report that both are doing fine and have produced abundant new choices of growth after a second heading cut this winter past.
I was able to expand the diameter of the irrigation tubing around each of the trees by adding an additional 10' to each tree. The picture below gives an idea of what I am talking about.
As you can see, I have tried to get water to as much of the root zone as possible. This size ring with probably be good for the next 3-4 years, at which time I may add another 10-20 feet. These emitter tubing type irrigation lines have emitters spaced evenly within the tubing, so they don't clog or pop off, and are can be spaced 8", 10", 12", and 18" apart. The ones I use are 18" apart. At the moment, I am running sets of irrigation every two weeks for 5-6 hours. The emitters release 1 gallon per hour, so I am putting approximately 5-6 gallons of water per square foot every two weeks over an area of about 100 sq. ft. I have discovered a great website, http://weather.wsu.edu/, where I can track the daily evapotransperation rates for our area here in the Pacific Northwest. Using this information, I can calculate out how many gallons of water the trees need daily, which easily can be extrapolated out to a week.... but I digress. Robert Kourick has a great book all about garden irrigation, where he outlines how to do this math, and he does it well.
Below is a picture of our Hudson's Golden gem in its full glory. Note the almost 4' of extension growth this season! What a marvelous example of an open center tree form.
Below is our Korean Giant Asian Pear which chose to take on a beautiful central leader form. I am quite happy with this tree, and have only had to do minimal training so far. Though it is already 9' tall after its second season! Yikes, good thing it is in the back of the garden!
Finally here is an image of one of the trees that I headed back a second time this winter to inspire better initial growth. I believe it is our Klapp's Favorite, but as you can see, it is making a best second effort.
The only sad news, that is both baffling to me and a bit frustrating is our Green Gage Plum. At this moment, it is near leafless, and has put on no new extension growth this season, despite a great showing in the spring. I believe it is Verticillium Wilt, but have not confirmed this, and a sample twig did not show the characteristic black streaking in the cambium/phloem layer. I am hoping with a bit of compost, and a more judicious spray program next season, it will fully recover.The next goals for the orchard this fall, is to compost each tree, and re chip the entire area. That will see them through until the spring.
Until next time, whenever that is.
