I planted an apple tree four years ago. I've never cut a single branch so far. In the meantime, it is around 3-4 meters tall with lots of branches and leaves. But so far there was just a single apple on it and that went bad before it ripened. I love the tree for its looks but in terms of harvesting it's not necessarily what I'd call a success story. :')
Ah I didn’t mean pruning, I meant removing some potential apples, I’ve read lots of different opinions, from removing all the flowers the first year to promote growth even.
These I got about 6 apples last year when I didn’t do anything, but that was year two, didn’t get any the year I planted it. I’ve already seen a couple dozen potential apples on this one tree alone already. Excited!
I can't do apples in my zone but with my dwarf eureka lemon tree I've learned to leave the most-developed little fruit or two in a cluster, pinching away the smallest ones to prevent crowding and avoid overburdening the branch.
I’ve got some spare totes around the house and I’ll get some more from HD to collect the rain water the next few days. I’ll just let the barrel overflow fill them up. It’ll be ghetto, but at that point those things are $12 for 100l or it’s over $150 for any other option of 200l.
Here’s hoping it’s enough! I think I can add some more straw here soon though, that should help keep it moister.
But 3-5 more weeks is rough, most people aren’t gonna follow them that long, so the more rain I can keep, the better I’ll feel when I need a tiny bit.
If your goal is more fruit, leave it alone. If you want bigger fruit, thin.
So if you are looking to make cider, you want quantity and would not thin. If you want big juicy apples to attack with your face like a fructose vampire, thin.
How much you thin comes down to how you want to balance quantity and quality.
Makes perfect sense, what about individual branch support? Just use some stakes if it starts getting too saggy? Is any of my apple ms better to do one way or the other?
I’ve got two, maybe I’ll do one each way and see how it goes!
You can do supports different ways, stakes are popular, but you can also use rope to bind back to the base of another branch or two. You can also let nature take it's course and let the strong limbs get stronger while the weak limbs break away and more energy gets allocated to the rest of the fruit.
You would have to look at the characteristics of the variety and decide which way is better for what you are going for.
You keep it small, you never have to worry about burnout. Spend 20 minutes weeding, then go on your day. You keep it consistent, you'll never have to worry about shit getting too big on you. If you're weeding your entire garden in a go, you're working too hard. You might feel like you need to GET IT DONE RIGHT NOW, but that's just your monkey brain going to panic mode.
Relax. Do a little something every day and over time it'll come together.
Bonus: keeping up the effort in the off-season (doing bed prep, conjuring the spreadsheet devils) means less work in the swap-ass summer. Everything you do now pays dividends, and you can eat an elephant if you take it one bite at a time with occasional naps
they make 'dirt knives' that work way better than a spade for me most of the time. Especially if you got rocks. I have bent and broken a dozen spades but the dirt knife is like a spade+crowbar you can be rough as you like with it it cuts the dirt!
A lot of them will consider it a good (if early) deadheading and come back, if it's not cut all the way down and there are a few leaves left. What did you have growing?
I don't know. I bought a huge amount of a varied seed mix and threw it all down. Unfortunately, the plants were mowed all the way to the ground with little stalk left even.
Hard to say without knowing which flowers. I can say from experience that California Poppies, buttercups, chamomile, vetch and salvias will come back after mowing. They will be shorter though- they learn and try to avoid the mower. If you're in a zone with mild, late winters you can probably start new seeds now, if you can keep watering daily.
I’m probably a little extra nervous about straw/hay, I did work for a plant that compressed and shipped hay across seas. They were very adamant about the proper care around the hah as the bails love to spontaneously combust.
We were there rebuilding a burnt down storage barn.
I know loose it’s not an issue, but damn hay, you crazy with microbial action.
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