"Grow a Little Fruit Tree" by Ann Ralph

If you're looking for ways to squeeze more fruit trees into your home garden, check out the new book "Grow a Little Fruit Tree" by Ann Ralph. Ann used to work at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery and did really helpful demos on pruning there. She's taken her years of experience with fruit trees and funneled it into her new book to help gardeners see the wisdom of keeping their fruit trees small, i.e., less than 6 feet tall. Check out my review of the book at Gardening Products Review.

Rainier Cherries!

This is the first year that I've had any cherries on my Rainier cherry tree and ever since I noticed the tiny fruits starting to color up, I've been checking them daily. The sum total of my first crop: 5 cherries! I was certain that the birds were going to beat me to them, but today I plucked the reddest cherry to see if they were ripe enough and couldn't believe how perfect and delicious they were! They were unblemished and juicy with just the right balance of sweetness and tartness in the golden flesh.

You have to be patient when you grow cherries. It takes three or four years to get the first crop and another three or four years beyond that for the tree to reach maturity. And for most cultivars, you have to have another compatible variety of cherry tree nearby to pollinate it. I've been meaning to graft another variety onto my tree for cross-pollination, but never seem to get it done. Some neighbors have fortunately planted two Bing cherry trees in their front yard, so it seems the cross-pollination issue has been taken care of.

So yes, it's only 5 cherries this year. But over the next few years, I should get a bigger crop each year. Eventually, I'll have a big enough harvest for a pie, or some jam, maybe some chutney, not to mention eating fresh. But today, life is a very small bowl of cherries and I'm OK with that.

If You Don't Know What to Do, Take Something Off

January is pruning season and there are few garden tasks I find more satisfying than pruning. Yet every time I approach pruning, my insecurities kick in. Even after a few years of doing it, I start thinking that I'm going to screw things up.

In order to build up my pruning confidence, I attended a free class in fruit tree pruning this morning at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. It was just an hour long but it was a great refresher. Two staff people covered all the basics about pruning fruit trees and answered lots of questions. In addition, they had a different take on the advantages of summer pruning vs. winter pruning than what I'd been taught. Conventional thinking has been that it is best to do the heavier pruning on deciduous fruit trees in the winter when you can really see the structure clearly and to encourage spring growth. The instructors today, however, suggested that whatever you prune off in the winter will grow back and have to be taken off again in the summer, so you might as well wait and do the major prune in the summer (actually, May or June). Hmmm. I can see their point, but there's something about going at a bare tree when you can really see the branches that is more comforting to me. But the best advice of the whole session was this bit of wisdom: if you don't know what to do, take something off. Trees can survive bad pruning better than they can survive no pruning at all. So, as with so many other things in life, the best thing to do is just get off your ass and do it.

So I did. With freshly sharpened pruners and loppers, I started on my two young apple trees that I'm shaping into an informal espalier. Because they're still young, they needed only a few cuts. Same with the fig tree I have in a large oak barrel. The real challenge was the weeping Santa Rosa plum, which I went at with total enthusiasm. I took off the very top branches that had started to shoot straight up in order to keep a nice rounded shape and to keep the height under 8 feet. By this point I had my pruning mojo back and was really enjoying myself. I moved on to the Ranier cherry tree, which has been struggling the last couple years. I pruned off the leader to bring the height down a bit, and trimmed up most of the branches to encourage lots of new growth. Last, I did some shaping on the flowering cherry, taking out some crossing branches and opening up the center a bit. All of that pruning took only about an hour and it felt great.

If you'd like some guidance on winter pruning, you might want to check out Berkeley Hort's upcoming classes. Next Saturday (Jan. 22) they're covering rose pruning at 10:30 a.m. and they'll repeat the fruit tree pruning session on Saturday, Jan. 29 at 10:30 a.m. Get there early because seating is limited and it was packed today. Also, ask about a 10% discount on your purchases that day for anyone attending the class.


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Cherry Blossoms and Wishes

In honor of the Cherry Blossom Festival going on right now in Washington, D.C., I thought I'd show off a few of the blossoms gracing my dwarf Ranier cherry tree right now.

The pictures I've seen of the blossoms in D.C. (the Washington Post has provided some good coverage) are really spectacular and I'd love to actually be there one of these years to see it in person. But I particularly enjoyed reading today about Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" project. Ono has installed ten potted cherry trees in bloom around the city so that people can tie on slips of paper with their wishes written on them. After two weeks, the wishes will be collected and Ono will incorporate them into her Imagine Peace Tower, to be installed later this year in Iceland.

It's a lovely idea and I look forward to seeing the tower when it's completed and god knows, imagining peace seems like the least we can do. But I won't be tying any wishes to my tree. To me, a tree is a wish in and of itself. Enough said.

Never Have So Many Been Made So Happy By So Many Sticks of Wood

Today I went to the annual scion exchange of the California Rare Fruit Growers Golden Gate Chapter. Unbelievable! For anyone interested in growing fruit, a scion exchange is like a glimpse of the promised land--so many possibilities, so much potential.

This was my first time at a scion exchange and for anyone who's never been to one, here's how it works: Members of the CRFG bring scions (generally, 6-12" cuttings) from their dormant fruit or nut trees. The scions are piled in labeled ziploc bags on tables, grouped by fuit type, and for a small admittance fee anyone can take one or two scions of as many varieties as they like to bring home and graft onto their own trees. Grafting allows you to get more variety from one tree and can also provide cross-pollinators--both of which are big bonuses if you have a limited space in your garden.

In addition to all the goodies you get to bring home--and perhaps even more importantly--you get access to people who have a wealth of information and years of experience growing fruit and grafting. At the Golden Gate Chapter's scion exchange, Idell Weydemeyer performed some quick demos that made the whole process seem quite easy and absolutely doable. Clearly, Idell is not timid with a grafting knife--one of her apple trees has over 40 grafts on it.

So what did I come home with for my $3 entrance fee and $2 raffle ticket (guaranteed to win something)? Four kinds of cherry scions (Black Tartian, Van, Black Republican, and Lapins); Granny Smith apple scions for a classmate; Fuji and Early Fuji apple scions for me and two apple rootstocks to graft them onto; and a Mission fig cutting to root. I also purchased a couple dollars' worth of Parafilm to wrap the grafts in. I could have brought home a lot more, but why be greedy? There's always next year's exchange.

The scions are now safely stored in the vegetable bin of my refrigerator, wrapped in damp paper towels and sealed in in ziploc bags, waiting for the right time for grafting. A few more weeks, I think, and surgery can begin.

Back to School

Like all good children, I've found that summer is done with and it's time to head back to school. To tell the truth, I've been looking forward to it.

My landscape-horticulture classes started about ten days ago. I'd registered for two full-semester classes, knowing that they would probably be more work than I could handle in conjunction with my actual paying work and I would most likely have to drop one class. The first class I went to was Soils Management. I was only about an hour into the class before I concluded that this would be the class I'd have to drop. It was going to involve more chemistry than I am up for at this time. Maybe some other year.

My second class, Arboriculture, started last Monday. Same wonderful instructor that I've had for two previous classes, and many of the same people that were in my last class. The instructor promises that by the end of the semester we will all be primed to become arborists. I'm not sure I want to be an arborist, actually, but it's nice to have options.

What I do hope to get out of the class are three things: First, since we have to pick a tree to do a full tree report on, I think I will do the city-planted tree that is planted at the curb in front of my house. It is the sickest-looking little thing you've ever seen. I'll need to identify the tree and then determine whether it really is sick or suffering from some problem, and if it is, perhaps I can convince the city to replace it with a better tree.

The second goal is to get more information on dwarf fruit trees that I can plant in my back yard. One of our field trips is to a nursery to learn how to pick trees to purchase (and where we'll be able to buy trees wholesale!). Another trip is to the garden of a man who has more than 30 types of fruit trees in his back yard. I hope to get tips on what grows best, how to prune, and how to espalier.

The third goal is to determine what small tree I should plant in my front yard when I re-landscape it. I'll be working on the plant list and plans for that re-landscaping job throughout the winter, and it would be great to know what tree would make the best focal point, so I can plan the rest of the yard around it.

I'm also taking a two-day pruning class in October, which I'm looking forward to. I've just ordered a new pair of Felco #6 hand pruners with a leather holster, so I'll be armed and dangerous very soon.

This semester, it's all about the trees, baby.