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Investment
Apr. 4th, 2016 07:09 amKip and I planted three trees over the weekend.
We have been planting about a tree a year since we got this house, because the lawn started very sad and bare (and with odd dips in it where a previous owner had eradicated most non-lawn things, I suspect.). We wanted to beautify the yard, to shade the grass in hopes of stunning it a little to make mowing easier, and to have our own supply of favorite fruits. So we started with a peach tree.
After a few years it began bearing peaches. Copiously. I had expected this--I knew that the problem you have with fruit trees is that the first week in June you have no ripe fruit and the second week in June you have 250 ripe fruit that will only be good for a few days. I had a plan for coping with this--my dehydrators.
Alas, what I didn't realize was that the peach tree we originally planted was a clingstone peach. Peaches come in two varieties of interest at the moment--freestone, where the pit is kind of loose in a middle pocket, surrounded by the flesh of the peach but not attached to it, and clingstone, where the pit is an integral part of the fruit and the flesh of the peach must be gnawed away with patience and persistence.
Either kind works for eating (clingstone is messier, but peaches are generally messy if they're any good.). But it is nearly impossible to cut a clingstone peach off its pit without turning it into peach mush. So drying them wasn't going to work.
Peaches went bad right and left; it was sad. I looked at our lovely tree and I looked at Kip and I said "cutting it down and replacing it won't get any easier if we wait." Kip and I are now at the age where a four year wait to get more fruit doesn't seem like forever, though it is still an investment.
At the nursery the person helping us seemed very vague on the distinction between freestone and clingstone peaches (perhaps he was just very inexperienced--I can't imagine that very many peach planters make the same mistake we did more than once.). We had to call in a more senior person, and then he listed the varieties available and I looked them up on the web to double check because four years is do-able, but eight years would be rather a long time. We are the proud owners of two Elberta peach trees, because apparently they bear better if you have more than one and also we needed an extra to keep our yearly average up seeing as we had just cut one down.
While we were at it, the large shade tree in back is dropping branches, so we also got a shade tree, and since I'm a sucker for autumn foliage, we got an October glory maple tree. The obvious place for it is a non-starter this year because our old metal shed that was holding our mower and bikes died in an early spring windstorm and while we finally found someone to tear down the old shed and take it away, we are going to need a new shed because the bikes are living on the back porch which means the canoes are living in my boat shop, which makes it hard to work in there. And *that* means we need trailer access to the concrete pad in the back where the shed will go, and the obvious place for a shade tree was smack in the middle of the trailer access.
So we planted the shade tree on the east side of the house a bit north of the back porch, in hopes of a pool of shade that will extend the shade pattern of the porch.
And Kip did the lion's share of the digging and dirt moving, but I didn't feel right about making him do it all, so I helped, and now my back is not happy. I have dug out the anti-inflammatories and hopefully will be better in a few days.
We have been planting about a tree a year since we got this house, because the lawn started very sad and bare (and with odd dips in it where a previous owner had eradicated most non-lawn things, I suspect.). We wanted to beautify the yard, to shade the grass in hopes of stunning it a little to make mowing easier, and to have our own supply of favorite fruits. So we started with a peach tree.
After a few years it began bearing peaches. Copiously. I had expected this--I knew that the problem you have with fruit trees is that the first week in June you have no ripe fruit and the second week in June you have 250 ripe fruit that will only be good for a few days. I had a plan for coping with this--my dehydrators.
Alas, what I didn't realize was that the peach tree we originally planted was a clingstone peach. Peaches come in two varieties of interest at the moment--freestone, where the pit is kind of loose in a middle pocket, surrounded by the flesh of the peach but not attached to it, and clingstone, where the pit is an integral part of the fruit and the flesh of the peach must be gnawed away with patience and persistence.
Either kind works for eating (clingstone is messier, but peaches are generally messy if they're any good.). But it is nearly impossible to cut a clingstone peach off its pit without turning it into peach mush. So drying them wasn't going to work.
Peaches went bad right and left; it was sad. I looked at our lovely tree and I looked at Kip and I said "cutting it down and replacing it won't get any easier if we wait." Kip and I are now at the age where a four year wait to get more fruit doesn't seem like forever, though it is still an investment.
At the nursery the person helping us seemed very vague on the distinction between freestone and clingstone peaches (perhaps he was just very inexperienced--I can't imagine that very many peach planters make the same mistake we did more than once.). We had to call in a more senior person, and then he listed the varieties available and I looked them up on the web to double check because four years is do-able, but eight years would be rather a long time. We are the proud owners of two Elberta peach trees, because apparently they bear better if you have more than one and also we needed an extra to keep our yearly average up seeing as we had just cut one down.
While we were at it, the large shade tree in back is dropping branches, so we also got a shade tree, and since I'm a sucker for autumn foliage, we got an October glory maple tree. The obvious place for it is a non-starter this year because our old metal shed that was holding our mower and bikes died in an early spring windstorm and while we finally found someone to tear down the old shed and take it away, we are going to need a new shed because the bikes are living on the back porch which means the canoes are living in my boat shop, which makes it hard to work in there. And *that* means we need trailer access to the concrete pad in the back where the shed will go, and the obvious place for a shade tree was smack in the middle of the trailer access.
So we planted the shade tree on the east side of the house a bit north of the back porch, in hopes of a pool of shade that will extend the shade pattern of the porch.
And Kip did the lion's share of the digging and dirt moving, but I didn't feel right about making him do it all, so I helped, and now my back is not happy. I have dug out the anti-inflammatories and hopefully will be better in a few days.
