The brief glimmer of sunshine on February 2nd, Ground Hog’s Day, wasn’t quite enough for Punxsutawney Phil to see his shadow. So, according to folk lore, we’re supposed to have an early Spring. No one living in Indiana would have any complaints about the arrival of an early Spring.
Customers have repeatedly asked about the prospects of a peach crop this year. We’re keeping our fingers crossed but so far, so good for peaches. We’ve had mild daytime temperatures but the night time temperatures have fallen back into the twenties. This is good as cold overnights keep the ground temperatures cold. When ground temperatures remain cold, the trees stay dormant. The longer the trees stay dormant, the better the chances of a peach harvest.
We’ve been taking advantage of the somewhat mild temperatures of these past several weeks and have continued to prune the apple trees. It is baffling to some individuals to watch our progress and discover that we still prune each tree individually. Hand pruning is a labor intensive job. There’s just nothing else to say about the process. Our older, more established orchard, takes the majority of our efforts as the trees are larger in size and more difficult to thin out and reach the tops.
The U-Pik location has been planted with dwarf varieties of apple trees. Smaller trees do not demand such an all out physical effort to prune. We do plan to plant more dwarf size trees as we replace parts of the old orchard in the future. With labor costs, chemical costs and fertilizer costs on the rise, it is just a matter of good economics to replace larger size trees with dwarf root stock.
It’s been cold and we’ve put in hundreds of labor hours so far, but pruning is absolutely necessary for good apple production. We’ve been told our method of pruning is outdated and we should perhaps look into “hedging” our trees. Hand pruning is what we do, though, and guess we will continue doing it for as long as we can. Despite the difficultly of the job and the number of labor hours involved to get it done, there’s really nothing more satisfying than looking up at a perfectly clear, blue sky, feel the warm sunshine on your back and knowing you’re a part of something pretty awesome.