I spent a couple of hours in the apple orchard with Farmer Bill the other day. We were feeding the apple trees. We do this with one person driving the tractor pulling a small sprayer and the other walking behind with a spray wand aiming the spray at the base of the trees. The mix was a bunch of micronutrients - boron, calcium, and about a dozen more - intended to make the trees happy. It's a chance to take a good look at the orchard when you're on the tractor, because you go so slowly. Overall, we liked what we saw.
The buds on the early varieties are at pink. It was April 1 and my calendar of 'Orchard Events in Minnesota' for southern MN indicates that pink should be May 1-9. This makes it a full month ahead of schedule. The later varieties are still at tight cluster - or not even tight cluster for some. The pruning has been finished in the original part of the orchard, so the trees look really nice right now. The newer part of the orchard - mostly Minnieska trees that produce the SweeTango apples - still needs to be pruned and shaped.
What we didn't like is that the weather forecast is for freezing temperatures for the next several nights. How cold it gets and how long it stays that cold will both play parts in whether we get apples this year. Farmer Bill will go out and spray protective nutrients on the trees every day, but that's the most he can do, and we have only anecdotal evidence that it works. It helps if the wind blows - the hardest frost comes when the air is still - so I'll quit complaining about the wind that's been blowing like crazy for about a week. The strawberries are not even close to bloom yet, so we don't have to worry about them. Same for the raspberries and the blueberries.
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