Raintree Fruit Growing Blog

The Pacific Northwest is famous for its multitude of native edible plants. Native plants can produce fruit for you and wildlife, and be beneficial in other ways. What grows native on your site may provide clues as to what will grow well there.

Pollinating insects are crucial to a successful home orchard. This blog post highlights bumblebees as important pollinators in addition to honey bees. Other native pollinators besides bumblebees are mentioned. Future posts will explore some of them further...

I worked on the orchard irrigation system at Raintree some before summer started. Soon, spring rains were going to stop and summer's dry heat was coming. We needed to be ready to irrigate! While sparing the gory details, I wrote some about what I had been working on...

I describe using whip-and-tongue grafting on pawpaws in this post. I attempt a description of the grafting process, as well as indulge in sharing my interest in the overlooked pawpaw, one of North America's most interesting native fruits.

The pawpaw grows native in eastern North America as a shrub or small tree that can form clonal patches.

Certain insects can be damaging pests to orchard fruit. The apple maggot and spotted wing drosophila are two fruit fly species that I monitor and control at Raintree. Biologically intelligent organic controls give the home orchardist hope for having clean in spite of these flies. Monitoring for apple maggot and Suzuki fruit fly using traps is a powerful tool for me. The traps also catch and kill some adult flies. When used widely, traps can help make a real dent in their populations. I discuss the life histories of these insects and how understanding their life cycles can be applied to their control. The codling moth is also mentioned.

I describe spreading wood chips around fruit trees in the orchard at Raintree Nursery. I'm excited that we just got a large load of wood chips dumped at the nursery. Wood chips, and other types of mulch, provide many benefits to fruit trees and the orchard ecosystem as a whole.

Fruit trees on dwarfing or semi-dwarfing can be easily pruned into productive open center (also known as open vase) or central leader forms. Learning these two pruning strategies will help the home orchardist establish healthy and fruitful trees. I discuss how open center versus central leader pruning styles differ and which fruit tree species are suited to them.