I received some trees that I ordered this week. Over the weekend, I planted them. This batch of trees consisted of 3 types of pears, an apple tree and a crabapple tree. The pears that I got this time were Beurre Bosc pear, Bartlett pear and Moonglow. When I ordered, Stark Brothers had some sort of special going on. I bought the Moonglow pear tree and got the other 2 for half price. The Moonglow is supposed to be resistant to blight and ripens in mid-August. The Beurre Bosc ripens in late September. The Bartlett ripens in late August. Since our goal is to have the orchard produce most of our fruit, spreading these out like this will help produce for quite some time. I did make a mistake by ordering the Moonglow in dwarf variety. I have enough room where I don’t need to stick with dwarf, but that’s not a big deal. I just made sure it was planted so it isn’t shaded by the other trees.
The apple tree is a KinderKrisp apple. This produces a small apple that is great for in a lunch box. It ripens in late August. We already have my favorite apple in the orchard, the Honeycrisp. This produces a crisp apple that has an outstanding taste. It ripens in early September. The other apple that I have already is a Red Rome. This is a baking apple, but is also tasty off the tree. It ripen in mid-October. Since my apples all ripen in the Fall, I’m on the lookout for some early ripening apples.
The other tree is a Chestnut crabapple. After doing a lot of research, I decided that I should add a crabapple to my orchard. This one blooms for most of May. But there are flowering crabapple trees that bloom for long periods of time. They are able to pollinate most other varieties of apples, so if I mess up with my choices, the crabapple will make sure that the apples are still pollinated. I went with the Chestnut crabapple because it produces 2″ fruit that are good to eat straight off the tree. I will likely add a flowering crabapple tree to the orchard to do this job.
It just occurred to me that I’m missing a critical part of my orchard, the cider apples. As you know, I brew beer. I plan on brewing apple cider and making peary, which is just cider made from pears. The problem is most eating and baking apples don’t produce the best cider. They produce a cider that is almost watery tasting. What I need to get is actual cider apples. Luckily, a lot of the “antique” varieties were developed to make good cider.
I also need to add additional small fruit. I have the raspberries and grapes already. I have some honey berries coming soon. These are a member of the honeysuckle family but produce an edible berry that looks a lot like a long skinny blueberry. I plan on planting these in a long row like I have the raspberries. I intend on planting some blackberries, and I will likely get more raspberries since they are my favorite berry.
That’s what I’m doing with the orchard. As I expand, I’ll post more about what I’m doing.
