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Changes are a foot in the orchard. This past September our Ground Team was busy pulling out 400 O’ Henry peach and Fantasia nectarine trees. The trees we removed weren’t producing very well due to disease. We have ample supply of these varieties from other blocks of the or- chard that are doing very well, so are planning to plant some trees we need more of – pluots and plums!
We’ll be planting a brand new variety of pluot called Crimson Royal developed by the acclaimed plant breeder Floyd Zaiger, who developed both the pluot and the aprium. We grow several Zaiger varieties of pluots and apriums in our orchard and love them, so we are excited to try a new one. In addition to the Crimson Lady, we will plant more Dapple Dandy pluots and Emerald Beaut plums.
Our ground team has finished up with removing all the old trees. All of the branches and trunks are being chipped and will make their way to our compost piles. Now the Ground Team is working on the very important job of ground prepara- tion. We want to give our new trees the very best start by preparing the soil. The Ground Team is going through and care- fully removing any vestige of old tree roots. This is done by hand by placing any roots into a bucket and then carrying the buckets to a trailer, which
will deliver the roots to our chipper for compost. Following the removal of roots, we will be conditioning the soil with our compost, as well as, spread- ing 10 lbs an acre of limestone and ground up oyster shells for calcium.
Once the ground is ready, we can begin planting our 400 new trees in January! Stay tuned for more news on our new trees.
Cutting down the old trees
Shredding the trees for the compost
