Bare root trees

I've spent the last few hours going through the local agricultural extensions studies of fruit trees, looking at varieties that grow well and produce a good amount of fruit.  If you're interested in fruit trees for western washington (or anywhere that has similar weather) you'll find a list of reports sorted by tree type and year here.   

What I like about this is that the researchers are objective about what they're reporting, and since the studies span years or decades, you can get a really good idea of what did well and what didn't over time.

So I've chosen a variety of trees which I'll use to both replace existing trees that aren't doing well and to increase the size of the orchard.  Depending on how they do I can market them pretty easily here - think self-service farmstand on the highway - or drive them down the road to the local produce stand.  There's a ready market for good fruit in the city as well.

Note:  I have no connection with raintree nursery other than as a customer.  I include the link so that you can see prices and descriptions, but I'm sure you can find these cultivars at other locations

Most of these trees are either dwarf, or semi-dwarf, or grafted onto dwarfing rootstock; a few of my choices are not; they'll be managed and pruned for production.

I'm adding the following trees

Shiro plum

Vandalay Cherry

Hardired Nectarine

Puget Gold Apricot

pic post: Sleeping pigs

Tree moving day

If someone were to ask me what the very first thing that they should do when they buy a farm is, I'd say something that would probably surprise you:   Plant trees

Trees, particularly fruit trees, are something that requires years to grow and get some value from, and you might as well get that clock started ticking as soon as you close on your new property.  

In my case the farm had a variety of trees, but there's a problem:  

County road on west side of property

 The fruit trees that were planted here were actually planted basically on the property line; which meant that the county would end up "pruning" these trees with their road equipment several times a year.  That means that they'd use their brushcutting gear and basically saw off half of the fruit trees randomly.

That's not great for fruit production, or tree health... so what to do?  Well, this is the time of the year that fruit trees are dormant, and I do have a small excavator...  so dig up the root balls of the trees and move them back 20' from the road and fence.   I was as careful as I could be to retain roots and structure, but I did prune the trees back a bit to balance the loss of roots in the move, and I'm hoping that they survive.  They are mostly italian plum trees and produced a pretty good crop last year.  We'll see if they survive.  If not, I'll replace with new trees, consistent with my advice to plant trees as soon as you can.

Trees moved back 20' from fence.

 The second problem I've got is something I have no experience in.  The plum tree in the picture below has some sort of problem that appears to basically have covered the tree and is distressing it.  On the other trees I pruned off all of the growths, but this tree has a massive infestation.  I'm going to see if I can find someone locally to give me an opinion on what it is, but if I can't figure it out I'll probably just cull this tree and try again.

black growths appear unhealthy

closeup of black growths

The growths appear to be in the bark, and cause the bark to ulcer.  With this tree there isn't a branch that doesn't have some of this stuff on it.  On the other trees I'd see one or two growths on the entire tree.  Just to be safe I pruned off any affected branch, but I'd basically have to prune off this entire tree.   If it can be saved I'd like to, but sometimes just removing and restarting is the best option.

UPDATE:  Black knot it is.  I'll cull this tree and watch the others carefully.  You guys are on it!