Community Orcharding depends on local growers raising nutritious fruit for friends and neighbors. Our Holistic Orchard Network focuses on sharing sustainable fruit growing techniques that emphasize orchard soil health which in turn makes for healthy trees and thus healthy apples and -- blessed be! -- healthy people.
We invite all fruit growers to join us. Open-minded researchers are welcome as well. We expect you to share about your orchard in some detail AND post a profile image AND use a real name. People just learning about orcharding may gladly read our discussion but please understand that actual experience with bearing fruit trees is what will determine if you can be a contributor to this forum.
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I am not a commercial grower but have been more than a casual observer of the subject of sane fruit growing for a number of years. I used to scour old USDA texts and pamphlets, read the classics on organic production and watched the use of h [...]
Posted by jkertesz • 3 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
We moved into our home in 1992. The garden has about two dozen very old pome fruit trees. Apples, pears and quinces, some planted over 100 years ago. The pear trees are huge – about 12 metres high with trunk diameters of about 1 metre. The trees were ri [...]
Posted by Michelle (and Chris) McColl • 3 months ago • 4 Comment(s)
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 h [...]
Posted by Jeb Thurow • 5 months ago • 2 Comment(s)
The skunk cabbage provided the first clue with all its leaves in tatters. I looked to comfrey and saw the same. Tulips had been clipped from the stem. Hail had come to the farm in our absence and literally beat up my fruit trees. Some buds lie on the gro [...]
Posted by Michael Phillips • 6 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
These very last days of March are tentative, eh? People in warmer places report trees in bloom and in the next breath speak of air too cold at such a vulnerable point in the season. Here the snow has given way to drizzle, with my south-facing block of tre [...]
Posted by Michael Phillips • 7 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
I'm just back from particpating in a heirloom apple summit put together by Slow Food USA. Twenty incredible apple people met in Madison, Wisconsin, to discuss strategies for keeping alive many "antique varieties" in the nursery trade, farmer's markets, an [...]
Posted by Michael Phillips • 8 months ago • 3 Comment(s)
We should start by saying that we have never studied marketing, and have no particular expertise in this field. It seems to us that “modern marketing theory” is the art of trying to convince someone to buy something they don’t really nee [...]
Posted by Michelle (and Chris) McColl • 9 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
We can bring the power of ceremony to the orchard on Old Twelfth Night, not to mention have some rowdy fun with good friends. Wassailing apple trees is all about waking the orchard to the coming year and sharing heartfelt appreciation. The traditions we c [...]
Posted by Michael Phillips • 10 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
Pine martins (a bigger cousin to the weasel) are active in the orchard these nights. Tracks go from tree trunk to tree trunk, then veer off when vole movement is sensed beneath the snow. There must be several dozen plunge holes out there, and certainly th [...]
Posted by Michael Phillips • 10 months ago • 0 Comment(s)
