Our Trees are in Bloom

As an apple orchardist I pay attention to the buds. Will they be strong? Are they healthy? How will I take care of them, because I know—left alone, an orchard in New England will become a massive tangle of brambles, invasive vines, and diseased fruit.

We’ve already sprayed the apple trees with fish fertilizer, seaweed, a little copper, and two different biological fungicides to make sure our buds are protected from the spring diseases. Microscopic fungal spores will rise from the soil beneath the tree in a light rain and land on the leaves. There they find purchase and grow. Once the fruit develops, the fungus jumps to the fruit, ultimately making scab-like forms covering over the developing fruit. Once infection begins, it’s hard to reverse. Spores are released over the four-to-six-week period until we reach 100% release.

Every year I have to be prepared for scab, the nickname orchardists use for the fungus, Venturia inaequalis, one of the early apple diseases and one of the worst problems for organic orchardists in New England. I remember when I first learned to spray. Suited up in protective gear, spray tank filled with 300 gallons of water and the spray materials, the tractor settings in low speed, 3rd gear, at 1700 rpms, I was told that the spray for scab needed to renewed before every wetting period. It seemed an overwhelming proposition. If it rained one day, and then four days later, I needed to spray again because the material would have washed off the trees.

First Spray

Since that time, I’ve learned to time our sprays to most effective for the maximum spore release. I’ve planted many new scab-resistant varieties in our orchard, and removed some of the scab magnet trees like Macintosh. And since 2006 when Old Frog Pond Farm received organic certification, new bio-fungicides are available for organic orchards.

Orchardists have their own language to describe the stages from bud to blossom. Dormant describes the trees in winter, when the buds are gray-brown and tightly closed. They wait for the right combination of temperature and length of daylight to awaken. The outer sheath on the bud is a winter quilt protecting the folded blossom inside. When the apple bud breaks dormancy, the covering of the fruit bud opens slightly to reveal light gray tissue, silver tip.

Then comes green tip. The buds plump in response to warmth and light. The bud opens further to reveal a green plant tissue. The next stage, half-inch green or mouse ears, is an apt description as two tiny oblong-shaped leaves appear. Tight cluster follows with a rosette of green leaves around a tightly packed flower bud. Pink stage is next, as this singular flower bud separates into five or six individual pink-sheathed blossom buds.

This is the most exciting moment in the orchard, for each of these flower buds, if pollinated, will become an apple. In the center the king blossom opens first. It’s the strongest and largest bud. The others follow; reserves for the tree in case something happens to the King. Full bloom is when all blossoms are open. Pollinators arrive from far and wide to drink sweet apple nectar and unknowingly pollinate the trees.

Our trees are in full bloom, and I won’t spray again until the petals fall. Bloom is the time when I walk through the orchard rows and feel overwhelming gratitude to be part of such fragile beauty.

May 4, 2021 Old Frog Pond Farm

An Artist in the Orchard

Usually I carry a spade, loppers, clippers, a weeding tool, a basket with rubber ties, and wire into the orchard. But like a plein air painter who leaves the studio and brings paints and brushes to the subject, I bring a notebook and pen, and sit in a patch of purple violets under a Golden Delicious apple tree.

Along with the violets, two varieties of clover are growing—mammoth red and white Dutch. I love clover under my apple trees—and daffodils and dandelions, mountain mint and comfrey, iron weed, valerian, St. John’s wort, bee balm, even stinging nettles. The more companion plants, the richer the soil.

Notebook page 5/16/20

Most people don’t realize that one apple bud opens to become a cluster of five or six flower buds. The king blossom is in the center; it’s the first to grow and the first to open. It’s surrounded by the harem waiting to take over if anything should happen to the king.

In a stellar pollination year, most of the secondary blossoms will be pollinated and the tree becomes a cloud of delicate wings. The downside is too many children. The apples will be small, with more disease and pest pressure, and less air circulation and sunlight, not beneficial for the crop. 

On this particular Golden Delicious tree, I see only a few blossoms. Golden Delicious have a propensity to be biennial—a riot of blossoms one year, and the next only a scattering. Orchardists can control this tendency by “thinning” the trees, removing a portion of the young fruit. As an organic grower, I don’t have an array of chemical thinners to choose from, but I can hand thin. On our youngest trees, we pluck off all the blossoms, discouraging such precocious behavior; these trees need to focus on growth, not reproduction! On the younger trees, we remove some of the fruitlets, leaving a few inches between apples. But on the mature trees, when the fruit set is crazy-good, our feeble efforts to thin hardly make a difference. One tree alone could occupy an afternoon, and we don't have a month to devote to thinning. I leave the Golden Delicious to do as they are inclined. Other trees, like the newer varieties of Liberty and Honey Crisp, are bred to discourage this trait.

The upside of this off-year is all energy goes into growing large and shiny leaves—optimal photosynthesis. A time of repose, a sabbatical to recharge. As I sit in its shade, I think about what the tree offers other than fruit. Maybe nutritive support to other trees and to the soil around its roots? Maybe sequestering more carbon? Maybe that strange notion, self-care?

This Golden Delicious tree is over 45 years old, and some orchard experts say it should be replaced because it’s old and leaning too far south. But I’m enthralled by its wayward slant, its zig-zag desire to find equipoise. In the photo below you can see the young branch I’m training to become a new central leader if necessary. 

Being both orchardist and artist is at times contradictory. Should I spray a particularly nasty, but approved organic material like lime sulfur to thin the Golden Delicious so they don’t fall into biennial production? After all, we have 28 mature Golden Delicious trees with no fruit, and that’s a lot of real estate in a small orchard. The truth is I appreciate the gnarly old trees and the young slender spindles, the trees with no apples and the trees loaded with fruit.

I finish taking notes and gather violets to put in a jar of olive oil for next fall when we will make salves and balms. A pair of cedar waxwings are courting in one of the Gala trees, and two orioles sing from high in a Summer Sweet. The woodchuck peeks out of a nearby hole, and upon seeing me, ducks back down. The geese hiss. On my walk back to the house, I snap off two fat purple asparagus no doubt planted by some robin scratching for worms near the trunk of a Cortland in the first row. Today I’m an artist in the orchard. Tomorrow I’ll return with other tools.

Apple Tree, Watercolor and Pencil, 2020, Linda Hoffman

Bloom Follows Pink: Orchard Pollination

Bloom is the stage when the closed pink flower buds open to pale, white papery blossoms. This is when the party in the orchard really gets going. You can hear the swoosh of long dresses, the honeybees’ buzz; and follow the flight of the bumblebees, recklessly circling, then landing, the honeybees alighting on flowers, drinking in sweet nectar.

Bees visit a lot of flowers to gather this ambrosia, logging between several hundred and fifteen hundred flower visits on each trip through the orchard. They suck in the sweetness with their long proboscis, then store these sugars in their nectar stomach. Upon returning to the hive with a full belly, another bee will withdraw the nectar, process it, and transfer it into individual cells.

When the bees gather nectar from inside the apple blossoms, they brush across the pollen sitting on small pillows supported by stamens. The pollen grains attach to Velcro-like hairs on the bees’ bodies. When the bee visits another tree, the pollen from one tree is brushed from the bee onto the sticky female stigmas in the center of the blossom of another tree. The pollen grains travel down tubes to reach the ovary. There, sperm in the pollen grain meets the ovules in the ovary. These fertilized ovules become seeds, and the apple grows to protect the growing pips. We find this flesh delicious!

Honeybees need pollen and water, as well as nectar. The bees will divide up these responsibilities for the hive – some gathering pollen, their main source of protein; while others gather nectar for the sugars, and still others water. Some bees including honeybees have ‘pollen baskets’ on their hind legs formed by woven hairs. The bees also have hairs on the inside of their legs that they use like combs to gather the pollen sticking all over their bodies and push it into the basket, mixing in a little sticky nectar, so the pollen packs tightly. You can see the bees sporting bright yellow Turkish pants if you wander through the orchard when they are flying.

This year I am worried about pollination. I can’t remember a bigger bloom in the orchard — or this much spring rain! The bees don’t fly until the temperature reaches fifty-five degrees. In the last week, we’ve only had about five hours of honeybee pollinating temperatures without rain. Fortunately, the native pollinators, like the bumble bees, will fly in cooler temperatures.  Only about five percent of apple blossoms need to be pollinated for a good harvest; the tree produces that many ‘extra’ flowers. But, maybe we should not consider them ‘extra.’ These flowers feed the many pollinators. The tree practices generosity. Giving and receiving are one.

If the apples practiced self-pollination, that is one flower on a tree pollinating other flowers on the same tree, it would require less flying. Peanuts, peas, tomatoes, and sunflowers are examples of self-pollinating plants. However, many plants, like most apples, have evolved to require cross-pollination to ensure genetic diversity. In scientific terms, this type of pollination is referred to as self-incompatible, or “unable to survive without another.” These plants all need another plant or tree in their life to bear fruit.

Cross-pollination is critical to a life cycle that ensures the continuity of the species. Maybe human beings aren’t so different. We are not self-compatible either. We need to interact with people different from ourselves to learn and grow. The cross-pollination of cultures, experiences, and ideas may be the ambrosia we need for a healthy, peace-filled world.

A Baltimore Oriole enjoying sweet nectar from a Macintosh tree.