Fruit Trees in Bloom 2013

delicious morning Tom Spellman with Dave Wilson nursery it's the first week in March and it's a beautiful day here in the San Joaquin Valley I'd like to just take a quick walk through the new orchard and discuss bloom times and cross pollenization we're here in our little pluot and plum hedgerow we've got splash emerald drop and flavor king right here all blooming simultaneously I can't tell you how pleased I am these trees have been in the ground now for just two years exactly two years right now and look at the amount of bloom on these trees we've kept them small we've kept the centers open we've used low nitrogen fertilizer we haven't pushed the water we just replenished our mulch layer and we've encouraged this beautiful flower set we're going to have an incredible crop of fruit on these trees this year in fact I think we're going to have to spend a whole lot more time thinning than we'd really like to but the flower set is just phenomenal and I can't be happier one of the most important considerations for cross pollenization is having like species that bloom at the same time so here's flavor oh so pluot and here's flavor finale pluot this is the earliest variety to ripen up in the series this is the latest variety to ripen up in the series and as you can see although flavor Rose has already bloomed out considerably it still has nice open flower while the late variety flavor finale is still in full bloom so even the latest in the earliest varieties of pluots are cross pollinating well together here in the Central Valley and I think from what I've seen in Southern California this year the bloom times are in great sequence I think we're going to get a great crop of fruit everywhere now anybody that doesn't think that fruit trees have ornamental appeal has obviously not looked at some of these varieties very well here's a couple of my favorites this is our spicy nectar plum beautiful pink flowers the red tip foliage is just starting to pop out we're going to get a great fruit set on this it's a wonderful piece of fruit right next to it is our double flowering Saturn peach and Saturn has got to be one of the most beautiful fruit trees you can grow for bring bloom it's a big bright double pink bloom it's a nice midsummer freestone yellow peach that ripens up end of July early August and and both of these trees are just spectacular looking and wonderful fruiting varieties I just can't get enough of looking at these trees here's some of our low headed varieties here's Double Delight nectarine just starting to flower out now plenty of flower buds up here in the upper structure that are going to be blooming in the next two weeks or so here's our Braeburn apples not quite open yet here's another one of my favorites this is the cotton candy a priam and it's just coming into full bloom right now we're going to get a great set of fruit on this and here's that low-cut style santa rosa plum that we've done so much work on to keep small and will keep all of these small but as you can see keeping that Center open keeping that wood aggressive vegetative would cut down plenty of blooms down in the center we're gonna have a great crop of fruit on this here's our successive ripening four on one cherry combination we've got Utah giant we've got sweet heart which are not really starting to bud swell yet they're going to be in bloom in another two or three weeks but behind here we have Minnie Royal and Royal Lee which are just coming into a nice bloom cycle now we're going to get a good early fruit crop on these two and a later fruit crop on the two here in the front here's our multiple butted pluots our two and one and our three in one as you can see again everything blooming all at the same time wonderful cross pollenization these trees are literally five feet apart we've got five varieties here in between the two trees we get in lots of bee activity we're going to be thinning like madmen in about another month I'm really happy this year with our spell your trees two years in the ground this is our burgundy plum we've already got a nice three-tiered structure to it as you can see we kept taking the vigor out and encouraging that spur would that flowering would and we've got a beautiful set on this now this is as ornamental as it gets if you wanted to use this as a structural piece in any kind of a landscape situation it's a great pollen Iser for other varieties all the Japanese plums and pluots and it's a wonderful piece of fruit in itself I love burgundy plum and I think it's one of the easiest plants there is the structure you know another really great point about this burgundy plum is standing here next to it I can really pick up the fragrance most deciduous fruit trees don't have a real high perfumey fragrance but this variety is just incredible it is probably the most fragrant of any plum or plum hybrid that I've ever experienced it's just a delightful plant to be around quick comment on irrigation I was just discussing this this morning with Mike Tomlinson we have not irrigated this orchard since the end of September and it's now the first week in March so we've gone several months without any irrigation we've had about 50% of our normal amount of rainfall here in the San Joaquin Valley and the ground is still moist so I can I can scratch down through the mulch and I've got a nice moist soil consistency down here I don't we don't need to irrigate right now so take it easy on the irrigation the last thing you want to do is over irrigate I'm getting lots and lots of comments on people that are irrigating once a week or twice a week or every two weeks through the winter you really don't need to do that these trees are not using any irrigation water through the winter season they're dormant they're not picking up anything so easy on the irrigation will probably irrigate here in the next few days because of the bloom we don't want to stress this bloom we want to make sure that we get you know a fair amount of nutrient flow through the system and have plenty of water there available so the trees can take it up and not physically stress but we've gone several months now with no irrigation at all and we don't need to irrigate today so keep a check on your soil moisture if you don't have a moisture meter make that your next garden investment 10 bucks will buy you the boy stur meter you can get check the soil around the trees in 3 or 4 different spots if it reads moist or if it reads wet you don't need to irrigate when that meter reads down somewhere between moist and dry get a good thorough irrigation on and let it go back to that point again more people kill plants by over watering than any other reason you don't need to water all the time only water when you have to get a moisture meter keep a check on it have fun well I'm really glad I had this opportunity today to do just a quick walkthrough on these varieties and look at these beautiful blooms the fragrance the eye appeal we're going to get an incredible fruit set this year a couple of things that we've done over the last few weeks weary mulch our orchard so we had originally about a three inch layer of mulch in here so we just added about another three inches on top of it recycled type of green waste material just a big heavy grind of mulch we also fertilized I like to get my first application of fertilizer on as early in the season as I can so we fertilized about mid February here about 2 or 3 weeks ago and we used a low nitrogen high phosphorous high potash humic acid based fertilizer with trace elements so that's going to give us our breakfast these guys are now taking up nourishment off of that fertilizer and we use the low nitrogen so that we're not promoting vigor but we're promoting more and more of this spur wood development and flour wood development so that we can keep the tree short and manageable and get plenty of fruit year after year after year my next walkthrough will probably be in about 30 or 45 days and what we're going to do then is we're going to thin and I mean we're going to thin like crazy most of these trees if if 10% of these blooms set flower we're going to have 90 times more fruit on this tree than it can hold so as we see as we start to see flower development and start to see small fruit set we're going to come into a branch like this a 12-inch branch or like this or 14-inch branch like this and we're going to thin down to one fruit on that branch so this may set twenty fruit and we're going to thin everything off and leave just one nice piece of fruit down here down where there's structure where the tree has the ability to hold that fruit so if you haven't put on your early spring fertilizer yet get the low nitrogen high phosphorous high potash fertilizer on take advantage of this beautiful bloom and look at these trees you can even cut some sprigs and bring them indoors and use these as a flower arrangement in the house and then as soon as you start to see pea size to dime-sized fruit set you want to get in and get thinning and the earliest varieties to ripen are the most important varieties to thin first so if it ripens up in May or early June or even the 1st of July those are varieties you want to thin right away you've got a little more time on the later summer varieties but make sure that those early season varieties get thinned and thinned heavy you

Channel: Dave Wilson Nursery

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Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2013