August 2011 Fruit Tree Care - Northstar Cherry and others

Fruit crops vary this year depending where your garden/orchard is located. I have some apples in Reno and Paradise Valley, but nowhere near a full crop. I did get a good harvest off my 3 yr old Northstar cherry; it lives up to its name as a tart cherry, but will make a good jam or pie.
If you have apples and pears and are tracking codling moths, now is the time to hang your second trap. When you catch moths three nights in a row, you will have your second biofix.

If you have cherry trees, you will want to check for pear sawfly larvae damage. Although a pest of all fruit trees, cherry trees seem to be especially susceptible in northern Nevada. Examine the leaves on your cherry tree for leaf damage evidenced by the green upper surface of the leaf is gone leaving only the brown skeletal veins. Then look on the leaves for a small (3/8 inch long and 1/8 inch wide), slimy, dark brown to black, little slug—the larva of the pear sawfly (a small wasp). For more info, go to: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r603302211.html.

If the damage is extensive (more than 20 % of the leaves effected) and the larvae are still present, take action. I generally will spray with Sevin. Organic methods include picking them off by hand (yuck) or sprayed off with a water hose. If unchecked, the larvae will strip the leaves on a large portion of the tree and severely damage the tree if not kill it.

Check your soil moisture by digging a small hole just beyond the drip line of the tree; the soil should be moist but not soggy. If the soil is hard and dry, increase your watering time. You will also want to check the moisture in your garden and yard as well.

Now is the time to apply Bt to tomatoes to kill the tomato hornworm before one eats one of your tomato plants for dinner; you can also use it on cabbage to control the cabbage looper (the 1” green caterpillar).  Buy a small container; it goes a long way. I mix and apply with a sprinkler can.

CC & R Farm fruit trees

The fruit trees are doing great!  We've been pruing them each year using the skills we learned from the UNR Cooperative Extension Master Gardener tree guy, Michael Janek, and our local permaculture group.  They're all between 3-5 feet tall and filling out nicely.

This is the Meteor sour cherry tree.  It arrived a scrawny bareroot; we whipped it according to instructions even though it was really scary to cut off the branches.  The poor thing was little more than a stick when we put it in the ground in 2009.  We were sure it was going to die but removing the wood so the tree would focus on root development really paid off.  It's beautiful.  We hope for fruit in about 2 years.

This is the genetically altered apricot tree with the icky name....15MA522. It is also doing well. We purchased genetically modified because we needed a small apricot tree that would grow in a pot. Apricots can grow in northern Nevada but the climate must be right; we figured there must be a suiteable microclimate someplace in our yard, so we planted it in a pot to make it easy to relocate. Until spring 2011 it was located close to the house and the warmth from the siding caused the tree to blossom too early -- we lost the blossoms in two or three subsequent frosts. We're hoping this spot is cooler so the tree will blossom later next year.

This was a mistake!  In 2009 we planted asclepias for the butterflies.  The seedlings where so puny I didn't really think they'd survive so I positioned them in front of the espaliered Calville Blanc d'Hiver apple tree.  The asclepias grew well in 2010.  This year it took off sending up shoots all over the place!  It is now taller than the apple tree and is undoubtedly winning the competition for nutrients and sunlight.  Next year we'll leave the runners that sprout behind the tree and remove them from the front. 

The Reliance peach tree is beautiful.  It also developed blossoms this year but the frost got 'em.  We'll try coving it with Agribon in spring of 2012 to protect the blossoms.

And finally -- the Newtown Pippin apple.  I really expected this one to develop some fruit this year because apple trees are supposed to produce within a year or two of planting.  My friend Leslie had fruit the second year.  This tree has been in the ground three years. What gives!  The good news is the traps did catch a single coddling moth.



Hail falling on hollyhocks in a northern Nevada garden