The good news – it looks like the raspberry crop will be ok this year.  There are green berries on the bushes now – there were lots of bumble bees pollinating a few days ago – if you look closely, you can see a bee – they are hard to get in the photo.

Berries will probably be ripe in about two weeks – estimate July 8’th – I will post a few days ahead when we have a better idea.

Now the bad news – the apple crop overall will be about 20% of a normal crop – about 80% was lost due to the hard freeze (5 degrees) on April 5’th.  Some varieties managed to produce quite a bit of bloom, but the flowers were very weak and if they did get pollinated and set fruit, it was very small and most has dropped off.

The fruit set is very uneven – varies a lot tree to tree and variety to variety.  The Galas appear to have the most fruit – the picture shows a lonely McIntosh on one of the old trees.  There is a small crop of Honeycrisp and other varieties.

It is disappointing to have such a small crop this year – the first time in 15 years that we have had this much crop loss.  Fortunately the trees all survived the winter well and we are glad the our crop last year for the orchard’s 75’th anniversary was so bountiful.

    Lots of green raspberries

Find the Bumble Bee

 A lonely McIntosh

Our UVM fruit specialist says “there is haggard/erratic bloom all over the place this year”.   We have found that the McIntosh, Cortland, and Ginger Gold were hit very hard by the 5 degree temperature on April 5’th and the crop on these varieties will probably be 10% of a normal crop.

Gala, Honeycrisp and Macoun which bloom a little later all have many more flowers.  We still need to see how many of them pollinate, but there MAY be a reasonable crop for these varieties, but not like last year.

We are grateful that the crop for our 75’th anniversary celebration was so bountiful.  The bumble bees are out working.  We have also finished planting 500 more Nova raspberries.  The existing raspberries are forming flower buds, so we hope to see fruit in July from them.

Another growing season is underway  – we will post updates as we learn more.

Bumble Bees in the old orchard

 Some bloom on Honeycrisp

Planting raspberries

We finished raking 1000 feet of rows where 500 new Nova raspberry plants will go in once we get some rain and the soil warms up.

Apple trees are now at 1/2 inch green and slowly moving towards bloom.  Buds at this point can still tolerate 23 degrees for 10% damage, so we are OK so far.  We need to estimate when bloom will occur to schedule shipment for the bumble bees.

Temperature this morning was 6 degrees and there was three inches of new snow.  Fortunately the apple trees are at “Silver Tip” – the buds are just beginning to crack open.  At this bud stage there will be some cold damage, but most of the buds will survive.

Cherries are still a question mark both from last night and from the -23 degrees on Feb 14’th.  We will just have to wait and see.

Most of our pruning is done – we need to do some grafting and get ready to plant 20 new cherry trees plus 500 new Nova raspberries.

Each new growing season is it’s own challenge.

We are starting off to grow another crop.  The winter so far has had very little snow – lots of up and down temperatures which is not good in general for all plants – apple buds are still tight and will be ok if they do not open too soon.

We will have to see on the cherry buds which may have been frozen when it got to minus 23 degrees on Valentines Day.  Raspberries may have been set back also, but there was some snow cover when it was coldest.

Photo taken this morning – no snow – but it makes the pruning easier.  Second photo is from family celebration last summer for orchard’s 75’th birthday.

Look forward to seeing folks in early July for raspberries.