Dawson Cherries Almost Ready
Life is full on here as we prepare for another busy Fruit Season!
At present we only have new spuds (2kg for $5) on the Stall along with grasses and herb plants.
The first pick of Dawson cherries will be in a day or two so they will be on the Stall this weekend.
We will be selling them in 1kg bags for $8.00
They are early this year which is a nuisance but as long as the rain keeps away we will still have them until after Xmas.
Plus there are other great cherries coming on after the Dawsons like our lovely Stellas and Lapins.
On the Apricot front it’s hard at the moment to pin point a PYO start date but at this stage it looks like between the 7th and the 10th January.
Will keep you updated!
Freight Charges For This Season
Just letting all you folks know that I have updated the freight charges for the 2013-2014 fruit season.
You can find them here:
http://www.hobbsorchard.co.nz/freightcharges.html
Speaking of freight, now’s the perfect time to place your Apricot orders.
Just flick us an email and we’ll take your order and dispatch your fruit as soon as it is ripe enough.
It’s much easier to sort it out now rather than waiting until the last minute and having to quickly figure out exactly what you need!!
More info here:
http://www.hobbsorchard.co.nz/fruitorders.html
I Despise Starlings!
This is what the Starlings do to any cherry that pokes outside the netting!!
I despise Starlings.
No not because they nest in my tractor motors or make a mess in my sheds.
I despise them purely for the fact that they can destroy a nice crop of Cherries faster than you can butter your toast.
We recently completed the annual task of putting up the cherry netting and even though this works to stop them decimating the entire crop, they still try their best.
I’ve personally witnessed Starlings find a small hole in the netting and then use their sharp beaks to make it big enough to fit them and their kin folk through!
The past two years in particular have been extremely bad (last cherry season alone I shot around 200 hundred!!).
But this year I have a secret weapon named Big Bertha.
Big Bertha is my recently acquired bird cannon who I will be deploying into active duty today.
This should help keep the Starlings off the nets and away from my Cherries!!
Big Bertha
Thinning Time
Before Thinning
After Thinning
Right now I’m flat out thinning the Apricots.
It takes a lot of careful planning and thought to be a thinner.
A degree in horticulture helps as one must think of all the crap they learnt as they are driven to boredom whilst slowly and methodically thinning the fruit so that you end up with Apricots bigger than your thumbnail.
Banjo music on an MP3 player tends to help relieve the boredom. You wouldn’t want any slow music as believe me, the day already moves slow enough.
I once had a friend who thought that coming out thinning with me would be a great experience and said I was being malodramatic when I told him how boring it was.
He lasted an entire half hour before running screaming from the trees and straight for house to beg my mother to give him a job in the garden.
Weeding with Mum and Ruby was apparently much more exhilarating. Who knew?
More Frost Fighting Action
Right now we’re having a run of nasty frosts.
I’ve been frost fighting for the past two nights and the forecast is saying frosts for the next three nights.
Good times folks!
Anyway on a lighter note, I took this video yesterday morning of the some of the sprinklers in action up the north end of the Orchard.
Check it out.
A Frosty Start
We had a nasty wee frost last night.
The temperature dropped steadily from dusk onwards so I was out on patrol from 8pm until 11:45pm when the temp hit -1c and I cranked up the pump.
It ended up getting down to -3c and I didn’t shut down until 9:35am.
It was a long night!!
Here’s some frost fighting photos for you guys to enjoy.
Check out my FLICKR page for heaps more.
Bees: A Love/Hate Relationship
Bees play a vital role in fruit production.
The problem is that they only work on their terms.
When the weather is good they work away nicely.
And then the weather gets cold and/or wet and they decide to stay in their hives and sing folk songs all day long.
Thankfully we are having some decent weather at the moment so the bees have put away their guitars and are buzzing around the blossoms.
Long may it last!
Early Spring Photos
Here’s some more early spring photos folks.
The blossoms on the Sundrop and Earli Rill Apricots are almost at full bloom and the bees are working flat out.
We’re meant to have some wet weather coming in over the next few days so I had to race out this morning and apply a blossom spray.
We’ve been lucky enough to not have any frosts over the past couple of days.
We did have a slight one on Tuesday morning but the temp didn’t drop down to -2c until just before 6am so I only had to run the sprinklers for a couple of hours until the sun was up.
Sundrop Apricot Blossoms
Looking down from up by the dam.
Almond Blossom
Sundrop Apricots in partial bloom.
Me applying a blossom spray to the Earli Rill Apricots.
Blossoms Are Out!
The first blossoms have appeared on our Earli Rill and Sundrop Apricot trees!
That’s right folks that’s about two weeks earlier than last year!!
Needless to say I’m not dancing with joy.
It does look really nice though!
Here’s a couple of photos I took today.
Sundrop Apricot Blossoms
Earli Rill Apricot Blossoms
The Buds Are On The Move
Sundrop Buds Almost Ready to Pop!
I hate unseasonal weather!
Especially when that unseasonal weather is warm weather in late July that causes the buds on the trees to move!
That’s right folks, thanks to a couple of weeks of warm weather here in Roxburgh the buds are getting set to burst.
Needless to say I’m not very impressed.
If the weather keeps up the way it has been then we could have blossoms on the Apricot trees within the next week!
So in between pruning, mulching and other winter maintenance I’ve been running around getting the frost fighting system all good to go.
This involves checking sprinklers, flushing lines, cleaning out filters, getting the tractor and pump serviced, doing a full test run, etc.
Thankfully I’ve had the assistance of my 2IC (Ruby) so things have been going smoothly!
Ruby may be small but she’s certainly a little worker!
On the pruning front I’ve been making steady progress.
At this stage I hope to finished the stone fruit in around 2 weeks and then I’ll be into the pip fruit.
That’s the thing about pruning, it’s all about finding the perfect balance of speed and quality.
You can go really fast but end up doing a substandard job. Likewise you can go the other way and over analyse every cut and end up moving down the row at a snail’s pace.
Once you can move along at a good pace but still be doing a good job then you’re away laughing.