PNW Edible Plant Blog

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.

The American and Asian persimmon trees in Raintree's orchard bear delicious late season fruit and add warm fall colors to the visual palette on a walk through the orchards. Persimmons are remarkable and useful trees, with attractive foliage, sweet fruit, and hard wood. Individuals trees can be quite long-lived and the Asian persimmon has a long cultivate history in East Asia, with many named varieties and much cultural significance. I relate me experience with the persimmons at Raintree to their desirability and interest in general.

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.

Intensive training and pruning strategies can produces trees that grow smaller and more densely, resulting in more fruit on a per area basis. For the backyard (or front or side yard) urban orchardist espalier can be a great fit. Commercially, fruit trees are increasingly grown in an intensive, high-density fashion. More inputs and maintenance are required to grow trees this densely, but the reward can be an artful fruiting sculpture!

Raintree sells some great fruiting vines. While working here I have learned some about pruning and training the grapes and kiwis we grow in our orchards. In this blogpost, I introduce how to prune and train grapes and kiwis.

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.