Orchard Care & Maintenance

In March or April, depending on the on the weather that year we head out into the orchard and assess the damage to the trees from either the strong windstorms or any damage from the elk caused during the winter.  We pick up the larger branches that have fallen and see if any of the trees have died.  The winter of 2022 - 2024 we had anywhere from 800 - 100 elk in our area bedding down in our orchard each night.  We had a lot of damage to our trees because there was nothing for the elk to eat due to the amount of snow in the mountains.  We also have wild rabbits that eat the bark around the tree leaving bare wood; its called girdling, the sap can no longer flow to the top of the tree which causes it to slowly die.  

1. Low branches interfere with mowing and maintenance. 
2. Once the trees start to fruit, we thin out the clusters.  If you don't thin out the clusters of apples you can risk breaking branches from the weight of the fruit in the fall. 

We have learned over the years that anywhere elk have eaten off the trees their saliva kills the branches 3 - 4 inches beyond where they chew off a branch, so anytime we have elk damage we have to take extra time with each tree and make sure all the branches have been trimmed. Spring maintenance and tree trimming go hand in hand.  We trim our trees in the early spring to give them the best chance at growth and apple production.  We trim young trees to encourage the shape of the tree and older trees for fruiting. 

Best rules we have found when trimming our trees. 

1. Make sure there is only one leader branch. Remove any damaged or insect infestation. 
2. Remove branches that grow into the tree.
3. Remove branches that grow down to encourage growth and production. 

If you take a seed from a honey crisp apple, you will not grow a honey crisp apple tree. Honey crisp apple trees are propagated by grafting; grafting is joining or adding a part of a tree with another tree so they grow together. Grafting is used to improve growth, yield or quality of plants/tree. 

We chose a root stock that tolerates the cold since we live in an area that can have long, harsh winters.   Our tree roots have a Russian apple stock of EMLA 7, these particular roots keep the trees smaller (semi-dwarf) and help with certain diseases that affect apple trees, specifically fire blight.  Fire blight is a destructive bacterial disease of apples and pears that kills blossoms, shoots, limbs, and, sometimes, entire trees.   

Gophers are a huge problem in our area.  There is never a "best" way to deter or trap gophers, it depends on where you live and the type of soil you have.  For our area, they best way has been putting out gopher traps. This is very time consuming, but it is necessary since the gophers eat the roots of the trees and can clog the sprinkler system we have in place to water our trees.  

We have found the spraying our trees is necessary; however because we have bees we are very careful about how often we spray and what time of day we spray since it can kill the bees.  We typically spray in the spring when the blossoms start dropping off the trees.  If we don't spray the earwigs and moths lay their eggs you end get bugs in your apples. 

We will only spray our trees again if we see an uptake in bug infestation.  Some years we have been able to spray once, on bad years we have sprayed up to three times.  We have also experimented with not spraying and our entire orchard was filled with rotten apples, so not spraying is not an option for our area.

During the summer we focus on making sure the trees have enough water and we are keeping the gopher population down.  We keep the grass and the weeds around the trees cut and trimmed, this help keep the bugs population down. Bugs love to live in the long grass and weeds that around trees. 

We also keep an eye on the tree branches while the apples mature and grow.  We thin the apples as needed so they don't weigh down the branches in the fall . Many times its hard to take all the beautiful apples growing off the tree, but we have seen too many times where the branches are overwhelmed and they break from the weight of the apples. 

Many orchards harvest their apples when they are still slightly green, it helps keep them longer and the skin of the apple is thicker.  Honey crisp taste the best when leave them on the trees or until the first frost comes through, it locks in the sugars, giving you a nice, sweet-tart flavor.  Leaving the apples on the trees gives the apples a thinner skin and can cause them to be more susceptible to bruising.  We have learned that honey crisp can be a difficult apple to grow and store, so we have learned different techniques to get the best yield from our trees each year. 

We have a refrigerator cargo unit to store our apples.  These apples are kept at a constant temperature of 36 degrees no matter what the temperature is outside.  This has helped us keep fresh apples from October - April. 

After harvest season is complete, we have very little time before winter sets in.  We do our best to clean up broken branches and apples that dropped to the ground, it is more likely to attract elk over the winter.  Fall can be a lot of work since we are harvesting apples, harvesting honey and trying to get everything ready for winter.