10:46 a.m. - 2003-02-17
Fruit Trees
"Roses are red

Violets are blue

I love you better

than a B-52!"

That was my Valentine's poem from Bruce. Romantic, eh? And so relevant in these war mongering days.

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Saturday was fruit tree buying day! Hooray!

We went to a nursery that carries antique fruit trees. They were having a seminar on how to care for said trees, which was of great interest to me since I have never gotten the hang of these things. Even though the land I grew up on had previously been used as an orchard and there were about a dozen surviving apple trees.

It had also been used as a cemetary at one point, but fortuantely there were no surviving bodies. Ur, that's another whole long story.

Anyway, I thought that hearing the fruit tree expert might help. He was the former head of fruit tree cultivation for the state of Alabama, and his name escapes me. Actually, so does most of his lecture, even though I took copius notes.

He started out his lecture talking about pesticides. According to Mr. State Fruit Tree, the best thing to do with your fruit trees is to pile on as much poisonous stuff as possible, in the remote event that you might get some peach leaf curl fungus on your apple trees. You might get a spot on your apples! Granted it would be a tiny spot, but a spot nonetheless!!

Really folks, the best thing to do is use streptomycin sulfate one or two times when the plants are blooming and then treat them with malathion or capitan when they are dormant. Or you can be really safe and use both at once!! The more the better! And don't forget the copper hydroxide! And the Sevin spray on alternate Tuesdays!! It's the only way to fend off the constant onslaught of insects and diseases your plants will face!!! It's really too bad that so many dangerous poisons have been taken off the market because we need more DDT!!!! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!

No wonder everyone is getting cancer!! Seriously, there is just no reason that anyone growing fruits at home for their own consumption should be piling on all these chemicals. It is just lunacy. Not to mention anyone growing fruits on a farm for the consumption of everyone else.

Ahem. I'm desperately trying to stifle a rant.

Ok, on to the pruning, which is where Mr. State Fruit Tree really lost me. He was just whacking trees all over the place! Granted, I have never understood pruning. Every type of tree needs to be pruned in a different way at a different time, and I just cannot keep it all straight. Not to mention all the pegging and pinning of branches. It makes my head spin.

My usual approach to it sounds kind of goofy and New Age-y. I basically try to figure out if the plant is going to flower on old or new wood, and from there figure out what time of year I should chop it all to pieces, ur, I mean perform the delicate pruning operation. That part is pretty standard. From there it gets wacky. My technique is to sit down quietly in front of the tree and try to subtly communicate with it in an attempt to find out what it would like to look like. Kind of like a blind hairdresser who's trying to figure out if a deaf mute customer wants short back and sides.

After staring intently at the tree for an hour or so, I'll make a few tentative cuts. And then, usually, I start thinking that the tree really wants to have all it's branches taken off, and it wants to be two inches tall.

So much for telepathy.

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An hour of thorough bamboozlement later, Bruce and I went to pick out our trees. At the risk of getting sappy, I have to say this was a dream come true. I have wanted to have fruit trees for ages. Ooh, I was in hog heaven.

We got two blueberry bushes. A raspberry and a blackberry bush, and a "Contender" peach. As we were staring at the peach trees the nursery owner came by. He was not into poisons at all, and told us how to prune the peach tree whip we had picked out. He made it sound so simple. "Just cut it off at the height of your hip" he said. "Don't worry about all that other stuff."

Thank you Mr. Nursery Owner.

We also got a Wahoo bush, which is also called "Heart's a Burstin'" because it has red berries with little wings on them. And some herbs and an ox eye daisy, and a Buddleia. I was tempted by a pomegranate, but those little buggers are expensive! $21!! It will have to wait.

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