Fruit Grower’s Journal

A visit to orchards in southern New Hampshire gave me a chance to look things over without the cover of snow.  Most trees looked great.  Yes, there was some peach flower bud loss – after all, it was cold – but things were looking, well, spring-like.  The orchards were full of song birds and other, [...]

Winter is still most definitely in charge.  The temperature today may have hit the freezing point, but if it did, I didn’t notice.  The one message in the weather this past week is that weather this time of year is fickle, teasing us one day before cruelly reminding us that summer is still months away.
One [...]

A warmer week has come at last.  While the snow still beats 20 inches in my area, the ground below is fully thawed and awaiting the warm rays of the spring sun.  Most of my seeds have come in – the usual beans and corn, small seeds like lettuce and carrots, and my vine crops [...]

My father-in-law always called snow in late winter or early spring “poor man’s fertilizer.”  After spending some time in a Concord orchard Friday, I would call it a major pain.  Pruning on snow shoes is slow and tiring.  And now, with a new foot of the white stuff, we will be moving even more slowly.
I [...]