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