A year later, our fruit forest is officially in the midst of its first harvest season, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, the trees and shrubs are young so there's not enough to actually truly preserve on a large scale like I'm used to, but folks, we are picking apples and pears and berries and that is damn good. Flowers, natives and other perennials are bringing in tons of pollinators, and biodiversity has been crushing it!
I'm particularly proud of our awesome resuscitation of the young apple tree I found lying on it's side at move-in, with so many apples weighing it's little body down last summer that it literally was bent over backwards to the ground, as you can see from this close up of the listing photo of the backyard.
As you'll note, it was also stuck between two very large stumps, so I'm guessing it's likely the past owner didn't think there was any way of eliminating those eyesores from the yard after she clearcut this once-heavily-treed property 7 or 8 years ago after move-in (I've seen the pictures, there are positives and negatives from this but either way, this is what occurred).
Well folks, she would have been wrong.
Fortunately, early on while living in my first home that I bought nearly 20 years ago, I discovered the glory of hiring good, experienced stump grinders when removing two old ailanthus (tree of heaven nightmare weed trees). A skilled grinding service can work miracles. And this was no exception. The guy I hired came by and not only made quick work of these two stumps as well as a couple other stumps in another area of the yard, he removed these two around the apple tree with near-surgical precision, I couldn't believe my eyes at first! This was the immediate aftermath...
Folks, this is why you get stuff like this done in Week One of move-in. Negotiating that two-week time period to get out of our last house and into the new one was worth its weight in gold. This allowed me to coordinate having all the gas lines removed, the heat pump & HP water heater installed, sell the old kitchen cabinetry and appliances, AND have four stumps removed before any real "living" needed to happen.
As you can see, a hunched over little tree was all that remained...but still alive, still standing, and still loaded down with fruit (a bag of which I sent the stump grinder dude home with, of course!) next to the loads of mulch that remained from the stumps, clearing the way for my newly imagined Fruit Forest.
So when we were fully moved in, my love took on my challenge to him of becoming our "fruit expert", which started with rescuing this li'l tree while I focused on getting the core of my Fruit Forest designed and planted, adding a Granny Smith, two pears, a peach and a combo cherry as trees, with currant varieties, blackberry, marionberry, raspberry, honeyberry and more to bring new life to a once empty space (aka "the blank slate" - a dream for a gardener such as myself!). He took on the challenge with glee, pounding in a strong piece of rebar from the hardware store (one of my favorite helpers in the garden for staking in situations where bamboo just won't do), tying it to the trunk to hold it upright while it developed a stronger, straighter foundation, then, in winter, giving it a much-needed prune to give it the best chance to not just survive, but thrive. In doing all of this, by Spring this is how our li'l tree was looking...
So get this: At the time we bought the house, we'd only seen only green apples and a tag on the tree that said "Braeburn". So we assumed that's what it was, because neither of us had ever eaten a Braeburn...or bothered to look it up online. Then when pruning it together, I told my husband I had a strong feeling this tree might be a combo, as I'd just planted two other combo fruit trees and noticing how single-variety fruit trees don't have the small colored labels on the branches (why would they?), so I hypothesized that this one lost its other labels when it collapsed, or perhaps earlier. And sure enough, this summer my husband confirmed my suspicions when the fruiting began - we have two types of apples , maybe three, growing on this tree!
And along with the fruit (we've harvested what we thought was a couple of Gravensteins only to realize this week those are most likely the Braeburns, hahaha, but the green ones are still ripening), would ya look at how the tree now looks here in September, a full year after that original stump grinding occurred, y'all?
It's tall, it's upright, it's no longer staked, and it's super lush. And the apples are SO good, y'all. This fall we'll be amending the soil with a bunch of compost to help compensate for the stump mulch that is now starting to suck everything dry, along with in the winter of course doing some minor pruning to help it continue it's growth, but I gotta say, I'm pretty stoked at what a difference a year makes...
Here's another quick perspective of it, surrounded by it's adoring fans of yarrow, bee balm, currants, berry vines and more...
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