April | 2012 | Friends of Pipers Orchard

Archive for April, 2012

4/1/2012 posting

April 28, 2012 at 4:30 pm · Filed under Archives

Check out the photos from the orchard last Sunday (4/1). Looks as though we’ve got some unusually early, healthy fruit!

: Art and fruit combine. This bee house was installed in the orchard last summer as part of the Heaven and Earth exhibition at Carkeek Park. We hope it will attract bees again this summer to help pollinate the fruit trees.

: Proper thinning of early fruit can result in healthier, more robust ripe apples when ripe, though it’s pretty unusual to find fruit like this in early April.

: A mason bee house is already up in the orchard.

: We hope the bat houses (this one near the grapes) will attract residents this year.

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April 14th work party

April 28, 2012 at 4:21 pm · Filed under Work party logs

On April 14th, we had gorgeous weather for our work party, and we busied ourselves, learning about the hows and whens of hand pollination. It was a bit early for many of the trees, but we worked on several pear trees that haven’t set fruit for the past several seasons. In addition to brushing pollen into blossoms, we hung up a bucket of pear blossoms with some sugar water in one of the trees near the mason bee house to attract the bees to pollinate the old fashioned way. Don also placed some pollen near the mason bee house so the bees could transport it to pear blossoms. We also weeded around the base of a number of trees and placed mulch around them.