Wrapping up the Season
A.V. Walters
Post bucket
We’ve had nearly an extra month of fall. Tomorrow, though, temperatures are expected to tumble down to seasonal norms. We’ve been rushing around to take advantage of the extended season and to get a jump on spring, next year.
We garden in buckets. It’s habit, from California, where it solved some of our irrigation issues. It also kept the gophers out of the vegetables. We’ve kept it up here in Michigan for some of the same reasons–water, critters, and because our soils need a lot of work. The buckets let us amend most intensely where the plants will live. Before the next season, we pull the buckets and empty the amended soil and leftover roots back into the soil. It could wait until spring, but we had the warm weather, so I did it this week. It will make it easier to spread amendment over the whole garden area in the spring, but we’ll probably stick with the buckets for a few seasons yet. It is more work–but promises better harvests until we can get the garden’s soil into better shape.
It was also time to attend to the fruit trees. They needed an end-of-season weeding, and it was time to wrap their trunks before winter. There are two main reasons for wrapping the trunks of fruit trees. It prevents sun scalding. Winter sun can warm the trunk–expanding the bark and the moist tissues below–on the sunny side. The temperature differential can split the bark, endangering the tree. By wrapping the trunk with light colored material, you reflect the sun’s heat away. The other reason to wrap is to dissuade mice and other critters who’d be inclined to nibble at the baby trees’ thin bark. Mice can easily girdle, and kill a young tree. I knew I’d arrived to the task just in time, when I saw that one of the apple tree’s lower trunk showed the early signs of nibbling! Now all of the fruit trees are wrapped and ready.
A tidy wrap to protect the baby tree.
Lined up in winter finery.
Along the way, I noted some successes. Before we planted the trees, located in the fenced garden area, we dug amendment in deep–very deep. In prepping their planting holes, we went down four to five feet deep and at least that far across. We wanted to give them a good start, and since our soils are poor, it was our best chance to add nutrients to the soil for the trees’ formative years. It has already paid off. Because we were attacked early by deer, the garden orchard trees had both the fence and individual tree cages for protection. In spite of having been seriously nibbled by deer, the apple, plum and pear trees have all more than doubled in size. They’ve outgrown the cages! They look more like 3rd or 4th year trees than 1st season trees. We may even see apples and pears next year.
The cherry trees–grown outside the garden fence–didn’t get as much care. First, they’re all cherry trees. This is cherry tree country. One of the pioneer plants in our sandy soils is the American Black Cherry. I didn’t think that the cherries would require as much soil amendment. I only dug the amendment in to a depth of 18 to 24 inches. I also thought that cherry trees would be safe from the deer. They’re bitter! No such luck. We must have voracious deer. They munched on the cherries, too. Immediately after, we gave them cages, too. But while the others have recovered and really grown, the cherries have recovered, but stayed smaller. For future plantings, we’ll keep the deep-amendment program.
It makes me wonder if we should dig and replant the cherry trees. It’s a lot of stress on a little stick of a tree. I’m sure we’ll debate it all winter. More likely, I’ll be researching organic methods of fertilizing–not as good as a nice deep start, but we shall see. Any thoughts on that?
tworockchronicles 
I don’t have any advice on gardening. But your discussion of cherry trees made me think about what happened in California last year. We just got teeny tiny bits of blooms and it took several months before the leaves fully came in. I had thought it was due to the drought, But it turned out to be due to the unseasonably warm weather. Apparently, when you get a certain higher temperature over a period of time cherry trees think it’s time to stop blooming.
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A number of fruit trees require a cold “dormant” period. There really is the reality of “too much of a good thing.”
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I am guessing that a fish emulsion might attrack unwanted visitors but chopped leaves worked in can’t be beat. I think you have done a great job here and should be proud of this well thought out work.
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We did fish emulsion on a regular basis over the summer. I’m always cautious about fertilizing in the fall. Who wants a heavy meal right before sleeping? Chopped leaves sounds good (not fruit tree leaves, mind you, but we have plenty of forest leaves.)
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Every time I read your posts, I wonder how you figured all this stuff out. At first, I thought it was years of experience–and then found out you were a California transplant. Do your neighbors share their knowledge? The Farmer’s Almanac? How are you so gal-darn smart about this stuff?
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I did an undergraduate thesis class in sustainable agriculture. I have always been a frustrated farmer. I moved to California for grad school, and didn’t leave for 35 years. During that time I read Organic Gardening (religiously) and farmed my tiny urban backyard. I discovered French intensive gardening and square-foot gardening. I grew all of our seasonal produce needs in my tiny backyard, despite heavy adobe soils and limited space.
Then I moved to Sonoma County, where my landlord gave me all the area I wanted for our farm’s Community Garden. (Community Garden, that’s the place where I do all the work, but share the produce with the ten or eleven households on the farm.) I loved it. I finally had the chance to put all I’d learned into action. Of course there were limits–this was early in the drought, by my farmer landlord put strict limits on how much water I could use. He made it clear, chickens first (it was an egg-producing farm), tenants second, and garden after that. We did fine with the buckets.Between research, trial and error (and there have been plenty of errors in thirty-odd years) and dogged determination, I arrived here, where I get to start all over again!
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You’re that woman I was always in awe of–doing what I didn’t do and wished I did. It’s good to know it does work.
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Well, it certainly took me long enough!
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You really care for your baby trees putting them in diapers for the winter! Your trees look pretty healthy but your conditions are so different to ours. I would have said that all they needed was lots of mulch – well-rotted manure, leaf mould or garden compost. You are going to have to balance adding good stuff on top against damaging the roots that are just settling in. Amelia
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Thank you. I know. I’m in a quandary about it. Rick says amend from above–and that may be the solution.
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My small avocado trees have been invaded by a black beetle and their leaves now look like lace 😦 I’ve never grown a cherry tree, but I think replanting may be the best option (although a lot of work).I find fish emulsion the best for feeding the roots and if you’re not going to replant, maybe drilling down around the outside edge of the roots to soften the surrounding soil may help.
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We kept our young fruit trees in cages for years, to protect them from deer. Finally they outgrew the cages so I removed them, thinking the trees were big enough now to survive on their own. I hadn’t considered that bucks would rub their antlers on the trees (they do it mark territory), rubbing off the bark and possibly killing the trees. Grrr… Very difficult to start fruit trees here these days. So your wrap is a good idea to protect against that too, although it seems your fence is doing a good job of exclusion.
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They’re still too little to worry about being rubbed–though I’ve seen trees in the forest rubbed nearly through the bark! The wrap will save them from little critters, though. I’m actually thinking of planting a line of grapes all around the garden fence. It’s not that we want grapes, so much as it is about creating another physical barrier in the “bounding zone.”
We have a native variety of grape — “riverbank” or “frost” grapes. They’re small with lots of seeds. I love them, and wander the bush, munching on them. Obviously they are well suited to the climate and soils. Recently I learned that the leaves are not bitter (slightly lemony, they say) and loaded with anti-oxidants and minerals. Might just give that natural hedge thing a try.
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