Many of you might recall reading that Jerry Pate, a founding member of
our fruit club, passed away in February at the
age of 85. Jerry's widow placed Jerry's Orchard in our care.
I enjoy the reactions of new club members who come to Jerry's Orchard
for the first time. They want to know how can one regular size lot,
with a house, garage,
and storage sheds, hold so many fruit trees. I think I counted over 60
mature
semi-dwarf trees and most of these have multiple grafts. There are
apples,
pears, Asian pears, peach, apricot, plum, and some I can't even
remember.
Plus there are strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, artichokes, and
ornamentals.
The club has pruned, weeded, thinned, mulched, and applied compost tea,
thanks to Bob having donated his big brewer in Jerry's memory. The
clubs members all agree that we could have thinned more, because the
trees are just loaded with fruit. We're picking as best we can. All
members
who have helped in the orchard are now picking fruit and leaving with
buckets filled with sweet juicy apples. We didn't judge the Frost
Peach's ripeness in time
and lost most, but the pears and apples are wonderful. Jerry's favorite
was the
Hudson's Golden Gem which isn't yet ripe.
The orchard's garden storeroom shelves were recently cleared of all the
cans and old bottles of sprays,
fungicides, insecticides, rodenticides, and unknown potions. The only
helper we used in the entire orchard this year was compost tea. We've
seen some codling moth and
tent caterpillars. When the leaves fall, we'll examine the bark further
for tent
caterpillar egg cases. Things look relatively healthy. We'll continue
with
the compost tea and in January we'll use the orchard for pruning
demonstrations.
We still can't figure out how only one man was able to take such
excellent care
of this orchard. Jerry's still teaching us.
The fruit club members are cruising to the 2003 Apple Festival on Salt
Spring Island, B.C. tomorrow.
I don't think you'll hear from Bob Norsen on Sunday. We're shanghaiing
him.
Judi
Received on Sat Sep 27 2003 - 11:44:43 EDT