Orchard Update – Spring 2013

On my way back from Lowe’s today, I decided to swing by the orchard to see how things were doing there. All the trees in the orchard were just planted last year between late fall and mid summer. So imagine my surprise when I was greeted with tree after tree bearing an abundance of fruits.

The Asian pear trees surprised me last year by fruiting just months after I planted them. However, there were only one or two pears from each tree. This year there are plenty of fruits forming on each of the Asian pear trees:

The fig trees also produced last year just months after their planting. It looks like I will continue to get figs this year since both the Black Mission and Brown Turkey variations have fruits forming:

All five of the peach trees are filled with clusters of peaches:

The two Medley plum trees have not formed any fruits but the Santa Rosa plum trees are fruiting just as abundantly as the peaches:

The persimmon trees have just started sprouting leaves and no fruits have appeared. The loquat trees are full of leaves but no fruits.

Last year, I planted watermelon and cantaloupe in my backyard garden. They ended up taking up half of the garden. This year, I’ve planted them at the orchard where they will have plenty of room to spread.

Another surprise that greeted me were several large leeks which were growing naturally under the pecan tree:

Needless to say, I am extremely pleased at the progress of my year old garden.

In the next couple of weeks, I will be adding another 16 trees to the orchard by introducing apricots, nectarines, cherries, and Fuji apples.

Plum and Peach Trees Planted

I had bought my plum and cherry trees a couple of months ago in somewhat of a panic. Fruit trees were getting increasingly harder to find at Home Depot and Lowe’s had put all their fruit trees on clearance. Afraid that I would not be able to find any more fruit trees to plant into the ground at the orchard this year, I bought and planted five plum trees and five cherry trees that Lowe’s had on clearance. While the price was good ($10 each), I was not impressed by their health or size.

This weekend I came cross a large number of fruit trees at the Home Depot in Dunwoody. Their plum and peach trees were good size and looked healthy. To compare, I also went by Pike’s Nursery and also found some nice plum trees there. I ended up picking up three Santa Rosa plum trees and five peach trees from Home Depot and two Medley semi-dwarf plum trees from Pike’s Nursery.

The plum and cherry trees that I bought from Lowe’s were pulled out of the ground, returned to the store, and replaced with the new trees.

Here’s a comparison of the old plum trees with the new Santa Rosa plum trees.

Here’s a comparison of the old cherry trees with the new peach trees.

A view of the row of peach trees after planting.

A view of the row of plum trees after planting.

Here’s a diagram on the current layout of the orchard: