more spring projects and a secret room!
It may officially be spring, but we have a lot of wintry weather still ahead of us. Snow and freezing temps are totally normal in April regardless of whether the general population believes it to be spring. I feel like realistic expectations about weather leads to less disappointment. And that is why most people find me unpleasant to be around!
This brief lecture about winter in the northeast has been spurred by the delivery of these babies!
The nursery said they would ship the trees when it was time to plant in my hardiness zone. Well, I don’t know what is going on in Missouri right now, but it is NOT time to plant here!
I don’t know anything about raising fruit trees aside from a pruning class that I went to hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension, but at The Old Farm, we had a teeny tiny micro orchard with 5 apple trees and 2 pear trees and then in the woodlot we had a LOT of old apple trees. They were so gnarled and beautiful and covered in lichen and I didn’t really have to do anything to get more apples than I could ever use.
The New Farm has some fruit trees in the hedgerows and around the pond, but I have a dream of (imagine angelic choir music) a ‘Perennial Food Garden’, so this year we are planning to plant a lot of trees, bushes, and plants that will feed us and our guests in the future. This shipment contains:
- 2 Bush Cherries
- 10 Red Currants
- 10 Black Currants
- 1 Cortland Apple - My favorite for eating!
- 1 Mutsu Apple
- 1 Gold Rush Apple - If you’ve ever had the Gold Rush Cocktail here (which contains apple cider), you will agree that this is kismet.
- 1 Sheep’s Nose Apple - Come on, I had to buy one, right?
I also got a selection of disease resistant varieties that the nursery sells as a package. I picked this for two reasons: 1. Hopefully these trees will pollinate each other well, and 2. When all of the trees that I chose turn out to be susceptible to some nefarious fungus that only lives in this area, hopefully I will still have apples. This is 6 more trees, Lodi Apples, Starkspur Apples, and Snow Sweet Apples.
Back to the problem at hand: I am really nervous about keeping these bare root plants alive and dormant until it is safe to plant them. They were more expensive than I anticipated which I would have known if I knew anything about growing fruit trees, but also I am really excited to plant them, excited to learn about growing fruit, and SUPER excited for delicious apples.
The instructions say to keep the trees cool and out of the sun until it’s time to plant, so we decided to put them in the work room in the barn. We have been having a stretch of gorgeous sunny days in the 40’s and I feel like that would definitely wake up a sleeping tree, and our garage stays pretty warm, soooo…
The work room is inside the barn. It has heat, but we aren’t heating it right now, so nice and cool. It’s windowless, so dark as pitch, and it is also completely full of stuff that we put there during the move to deal with next year, i.e. NOW. If you could imagine some horror film sound effects when you look at this photo it would complete the experience of actually being in there. I actually took a video for this post where I turned slowly in a circle so you could see the full extent of the hoarder nightmare, but then I thought there might be some sensitive readers someday and I didn't want to trigger anyone, wink!
Anyway! Try to ignore the clutter as I continue to talk about the trees. Hopefully this solution will work to keep everything healthy. We put pine shavings around the roots and then wetted them and since we are out there twice a day for chores, we can keep a close eye on the whole situation. Maybe if everyone keeps their fingers crossed, we will make it to planting time!
