Harvesting Plums

People cannot believe that my husband and I have plum and peach trees.  The idea of growing your own fruit, in a Massachusetts suburb, seems impossibly exotic.  It is as if fruit were some kind of alien life form that only grows in California. 

Not true, as my friends, neighbors and family can attest.  Each August we harvest plums.  After the plums are the peaches.  Our pear trees died.  I read recently that they don't like wet roots; there is an underground stream in our neighborhood that may have caused their demise.

You do not need much room to grow fruit trees either.  We have less than a quarter acre of land, most of it occupied by a house and driveway.  All you need are two of each kind of fruit; they do not even have to be the same variety.  (You don't need two of a kind if a neighbor - say within a quarter of a mile, has the same type of trees.)

Two years ago we had a spectacular crop of plums.  We have two types, and they produce fruit that can be picked and eaten about two weeks apart.  Since there was so much fruit, I encouraged neighbors to help themselves.  Children seemed to love the fruit most of all.  There was even a local nun who came several times to take bags of plums back to the retired nuns at the local convent.  We were well prayed for that summer.

Last year, the harvest was not very good.  I bought the book The Holistic Orchard; Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way, by Michael Phillips, for my husband.  As with many gifts, I was the one who used it.  Luckily, my husband listened to the suggestions I got from the book (there are many; the book is very detailed).  One was to mulch the trees with ramial  wood chips (thin twigs from deciduous trees.)  Orchards, in their natural state, exist at the edge of deciduous forests, where there is lots of debris (i.e. twigs), from the established trees.  This wood has a high nitrogen content.  Thicker branches have a high carbon content (which is why they burn well, but is not a good mulch.)

The ramial wood mulch promotes a beneficial fungal environment for the tree, especially the roots.  The roots are able to work with the fungi to tap into many more nutrients in the soil than possible without the rich fungal environment.  I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding how and why to produce healthy, productive fruit trees.

Here is a picture of a plum right before I picked it.  The fruit ripens quickly.  If not picked, it either drops and rots, or the animals eat it.

The peach trees are full of fruit.  They will be ready to be picked in a week or two.

Hummingbird Heaven

I despaired that I would not see any hummingbirds this year.  All of the right plants are in my garden - buddleia (butterfly bush), lobelia cardinalis, garden phlox, and echinacea purpurea.  No matter, no hummingbirds.

Perhaps my cat, Jack Bauer, had scared them away.  We haven't had any goldfinches in a few years, after all.

Then, the other day, while I was picking green beans, I thought I saw a lone hummingbird startle and fly away.  Today, while waiting for a carpenter to fix part of my rood deck, I saw them - a pair of hummingbirds checking out the phlox, the buddleia, and, of course, the lobelia cardinalis.

  

As I wrote about last week, my lawn looks dreadful, I have garden patches that are way past their prime, and the most robust plants I have are weeds.  No matter, the hummingbirds are back, and I hope that they stay a while.

Not the best picture - it is hard to photograph hummingbirds.  I have been seeing one or two of them for the last several days.  The white-flowered plant is a ptatycodon (balloon flower).