Dear CSA Members,
It’s always difficult to make the decision to pull out an orchard, or even part of one. There are two parts to this kind of decision:
1. There must be something you really want to plant but don’t have any open ground available.
2. There has to be at least one or more good reasons guiding you in exactly which orchard to be removed.
This year the choices were easy. Today we’re starting the process of removing cherries to make way for mulberries. You all know by now that climate change is impacting our cherry production in a BIG WAY. Warm winters impact the cherry tree’s ability to set fruit. Those flower buds must have at least 900 hours of winter chill (45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, accumulated between 11/1 and 2/28). So far the past 3 years in a row we haven’t been getting that. It’s time to begin thinking about new crops which are better suited, climate-wise, to our changing environment. So, I’ve been researching mulberries. I actually planted about 4 “Persian” mulberries over 10 years ago and LOVE the fruit.
However, Persians are impossible to handle, (although maybe I should travel to Persia to see how it’s done!). The fruit, while incredibly sweet and delicious are just too soft when they get ripe. They will stain everything they touch dark purple! However, last May I visited a friend in Fremont who has a “Pakistani” mulberry tree. We went into his garden and he showed me the tree — tall, lush green leaves — it was beautiful!
We picked fruit. It was really good. Not quite as sweet as the Persian Mulberry but still very good. No stains and its larger fruit was easy to pick. Mulberries have all kinds of great nutritional value such as vitamin C, fiber and iron. So I brought home a basket of these and found that they also store well.
We should be picking them in May, before we get super busy with apricots. So, here goes! Today I’ve got 10 men out in the orchard removing the cherry trees to make way for mulberries. Some are coiling up all the drip tubing and removing above ground parts of the irrigation system. Two men are working with chainsaws to cut branches all the way down to a stump in the ground.
Then four guys are dragging the long branches over to the “chipper” to be shredded into small chips of wood suitable for composting. Next week, the backhoe will come to dig out the posts, the Ripper will come to Rip the soil — which essentially breaks it up to a depth of 3 feet to improve soil aeration, water storage and root penetration. More later… Gotta go for now!