Here in western washington we say that it dosen't warm up till the 4th of July, But this year mother nature gave us a suprise. its June 2nd and we have already had two weeks of temps over 70 and today its over 80 the peach trees have peaches the size of a shooter marble and the apples are ready to have footies put on.

     The new orchard is coming along slowly but there is still much to do. This winter I cleared out by hand a couple hundered trees to make room for the orchard. Since our soil is so inmature out here I wanted to disturb it as little as possiable. This gave me a forest floor to plant my orchard in. I had the soil tested and it came back with 9.16% OM but only a 18.77 TEC  and a 5.4PH so out came the Azomite and lime. Nothing goes to waste in my homestead so all the trees that were cut down went either to the woodpile or are getting chipped up to go back around the fruit trees with some alfalfa meal. Most of the trees are alder which are pioneer trees so they break down fast once chipped up. I will then spray them with compost teas to encourge the fungal growth with in the soil aroud my trees. I did this to my first orchard that was started when we moved here in 2004 and I am starting to see good results with little insect and diease pressure (of course by saying that this year will be a bumper crop of both) I use both a refractometer and a PH meter to moniter the trees. I take leaf readings once every two weeks unless I stasrt to see problems then I will do it more often. As I go through the season I am still reading the chapter on Enriching of fruit lands and another book ECO-Farm to come up with my stratagey for my orchard. I know for sure that the Azomite and lime would be needed but now I want to get all the steps right to the nutrient balanceing act. As for orchard floor managment I am sticking to the woodchips for now since they seem to be working here. when I go under my trees and see all of those saprophitic fungi laced through the woodchips I just know they are working hard. The temp today is starting to cool off so time to get out and put on the footies