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County Events

Ulster County Events in August 2013

Annandale-on-Hudson Exhibit: "No Borders in a Wok That Can't Be Crossed." Works by Helen Marten and "Once Again the World is Flat," b...

05 Aug 2013 | 0 comments | Read more

Dutchess County Events in August 2013

Exhibit: "No Borders in a Wok That Can't Be Crossed." Works by Helen Marten and "Once Again the World is Flat," by Haim Steinbach. ...

05 Aug 2013 | 0 comments | Read more
Feature Articles

Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville

Major facelift completed in time for new season of shows by Tod Westlake If you haven’t been to Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville for...

11 Jul 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

The Heritage Wheat Revival

Stone ground ancient grains are packed with nutrients by Anne Pyburn Craig Wheat has been grown and domesticated ever since our specie...

02 Jul 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

Walkway Over the Hudson

New records being broken as new developments arise.    When Camoin Associates studied the potential economic impact of the Walk...

02 Apr 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

Radio Uprising by CMP

Local radio continues to inspire and push new boundaries. by Anne Pyburn Craig Mia Chin was a student throughout the progra...

01 Mar 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

Publisher's Editorial

  • 02 Aug 2013 Three Year Anniversary
  • 02 Aug 2013 Red Baron of Rhinebeck
The Yardavore

In the Weeds

by Maria Reidelbach Maybe you've never thought about this, but what is the definition of a weed? A weed is, simply, any type of plan...

11 Jul 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

Trees for Bees

by Maria Reidelbach Last month in my column about bees, Chris Harp, local apiarist, explained that the blossoms of fruit Mulberries...

13 May 2013 | 1 comments| Read more

Deerly Departed

by Maria Reidelbach Last month we talked about the havoc that deer wreak in your garden. We covered how deer are gourmets and like ...

08 Mar 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

Skål!

by Maria Reidelbach If you think we upstaters have it rough in the winter, check out Sweden. It's got the same latitude as Nova Scotia,...

05 Dec 2012 | 0 comments| Read more
Transition Field Notes

Relating with Permaculture: Principle #11

Use Edges and Value the Marginal by Deena Wade Founder of the Transition movement, Rob Hopkins, taught permaculture—design principl...

02 Aug 2013 | 0 comments| Read more

People In Your Neighborhood

Food & Restaurant

Fruit of the valley provides essential goodness.

by Phoenix Trent The Hudson Valley is a bounty of fresh produce throughout the calendar year, but the diverse offerings that the summer...

30 Jul 2013 | Read more
Arts & Music

From the Fisher Center to Lincoln Center:

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra and its well-rounded education. by Philip Ehrensaft Of all the Bard College success stories,...

28 May 2013 | Read more
Horoscopes

Inner Space for August 2013

by Eric Francis The Leo New Moon is Tuesday, August 6 at 5:50pm. This event is synchronous with the midsummer festival Lunesa, also kn...

02 Aug 2013 | Read more
Local Economy

Farming Risks and Rewards

Increase in local farmers and markets a sign of the times.   by Anne Pyburn Craig Besides being backbreaking, farming is a ...

16 Oct 2012 | Read more
Bread & Roses

It’s All Here

by Sherill Hatch “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.” This century-old labor slogan bears repeating today. Beau...

02 Aug 2013 | Read more
New Economics

Buddhist Economics 2.0

By David McCarthy E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, first published in 1973 and still in print, is arguably the cornerstone of w...

02 Aug 2013 | Read more
Re>think Local

TEDxLongDock:

This is What Community Looks Like by Scott Tillitt The Dalai Lama visited NYC in 2003 for a week of events culminating in a public t...

02 Aug 2013 | Read more
Culture Features

New York Theater's Industrial Incubator

Vassar's Powerhouse Festival kicks off its 29th edition by Philip Ehrensaft Chloe Sevigny in Abigail/1702. © Vassar & ...

10 Jun 2013 | Read more

Daily Video

Trees for Bees

by Maria Reidelbach

Last month in my column about bees, Chris Harp, local apiarist, explained that the blossoms of fruit
Mulberries.
trees are one of the richest sources of food for bees. Just after I wrote the piece, there was more bad news about the colony collapse disease that threatens the entire honeybee species. What a great time to think about adding more blossoming fruit trees to a garden both for our six-legged allies and for our own delight!

If foraging wild food is like a pick-up, and growing annual vegetables is like a summer fling, planting a fruit or nut tree is like getting married. Both marriage and tree take time to get established, but if healthy, both endure for a very, very long time. “You plant a pear for your heir,” is the old saying that John Wightman repeated to me. John is the extremely knowledgeable farmer of Wightman Fruit Farm and an NRCCA Certified Northeastern Crop Advisor. He sobered me about the impact of, and the amount of care needed by, the unimposing twig with roots that you place in your garden. If all goes well that twig will become a towering presence, so you want to take your time and choose very, very carefully. If you choose well, John adds, well-placed and -tended fruit and nut trees can add a lot of value to a garden both visually and productively. He points out succinctly, “Trees are fantastic at turning solar energy into stuff that tastes good.”

Siting a tree in an optimal location is crucial. The main conditions that affect a tree's success are: the amount of space for mature size, amount of sunlight, the condition and composition of the soil, water drainage, exposure, wind direction and soil contamination. Many species need to be planted in pairs in order to fruit abundantly (kinda romantic, I think), so you've either got to have room for two, or get your neighbor to plant one. The permaculture method takes the art of siting to a new level. Ethan Roland is the principal of Appleseed Permaculture in Accord and for the last seven years has been planning balanced ecosystems that contain a wide variety of food-bearing plants, from annual vegetables to berries to fungus to trees. Ideally, all live in a symbiotic community that makes the best of a site's conditions and that maximizes self-maintenance and sustainability.

The variety of tree you choose will have a huge impact on your success. Counterintuitively, the most obvious choices are not the best! Our Hudson Valley climate spans the USDA hardiness zones from 5 to 7. This rules out citrus fruits and tropical fruits, obviously, but also makes some borderline species much more challenging. Peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums will grow here, but you court failure at many turns. Successful growers take these limitations seriously and instead choose species and varieties that thrive here.

Elizabeth Ryan is a local ag powerhouse, one of the founders of the New York City greenmarket and farmer of four orchards in Dutchess and Ulster counties. For home growers she recommends pears; the trees don't freeze and although they grow slowly, they will live 100 years (plant a pear for your heir!). Elizabeth also suggests the sweet cherry varieties Schmidts Biggarreau and Hedelfingen, and sour cherries, which I think are the most insanely delicious fruit ever.

Lee Reich is a New Paltzian who has written a bunch of books about all aspects of edible landscaping. He's got a master’s degree in soil science, and a doctorate in horticulture. Lee grows a stunning variety of fruits and vegetables on his “farmden” (farm and garden). He recommends native varieties because they evolved especially for our environment. These include the pawpaw (get a named variety), the persimmon (Szukis is good), pear (dwarf trees do well), sour cherry trees (Cornelian), and chestnuts (peach chestnut). Wightman recommends dwarf varieties for small gardens.

Cultivated fruit and nut trees need more care than ornamental or native trees because it's heavy-lifting to grow fruit every year (literally): they need species-specific feeding and pruning, they are vulnerable to pests and diseases (who also like to eat fresh fruit), and some more particular than others. Apples, as it turns out, are incredibly difficult to grow, and require specialized pruning and multiple pesticide sprayings, whether organic or not. It's not rocket science, but if you don't do it right you probably won't get fruit and your tree could die. Who knew?

Many smart growers choose native fruit trees with unfamiliar fruit. Natives are both hearty and disease and pest resistant. Philip Perlman is a retired video and filmmaker and a founder of The Kitchen, a performing arts org in New York City. These days he farmdens in Accord, and has become so smitten with the pawpaw tree that he has planted over 60 of them—a real pawpaw plantation! Pawpaws are a delicious, tropical-tasting fruit that is distantly related to the banana. Philip sells his extras to the High Falls Food Co-op, where you can get them for a few weeks in September. Lee Reich points out that pawpaw trees are very beautiful in all seasons. They also begin bearing in just three or four years. Another native tree that is recommended by the experts I asked is the persimmon. Philip likes the hearty American persimmon varieties, which bear a juicy, sweet-tart fruit in the fall. Ethan recommends mulberry trees, with a delicious fruit that looks like a blackberry.

Chestnuts take a long time—7 to 10 years to fruit—but they, too, are a favorite with our mavens. A generous neighbor gave me some fresh chestnuts once and they were shockingly good. Most native chestnuts were wiped out in the 20th century by blight, but now there are new blight-resistant varieties. Lee recommends hybrids and Philip likes the flavor of Chinese chestnuts best. Hazelnuts are also a hearty native nut and they grow in curious little cabbage-like shrouds.

There's something I haven't mentioned that is a problem with almost all fruit trees. Squirrels are the elephant in the room (or, er, garden). Philip recommends planting your trees far enough apart so that the little buggers can't jump from tree to tree. Birds, also, can be voracious. Chris Hewitt (CW publisher) once told me that smart old farmers would plant mulberries next to their cherry trees because the birds liked mulberries better.

I hope that I've whetted your appetite for tree fruit and nuts. But do your homework! Catalogs may entice, but as John Wightman points out, “You don't build a house by going to the lumberyard first,” and “don't plant more than you can care for.” It's a bit of work, but the payoff? John confides that “my apples taste better to me than any other apples do,” and your fruit probably will, too. He thinks it's the taste of pride.

Maria Reidelbach is the proprietress of Homegrown Mini-Golf on Kelder's Farm: wacky putting greens set in a tasting garden of edible plants.

Tree fruit related events in May:
Lee Reich plant sale (keep an eye on his blog for details)
Kickstarter project to rebuild the historic cider house at Breezy Hill Orchard: kickstarter.com, search Breezy Hill

Good resources:
Appleseed Permaculture: appleseedpermaculture.com
Lee Reich's website and blog: leereich.com
Fruit Production for the Home Gardener, Penn State: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fphg
The Pruning Book, by Lee Reich
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, by Lee Reich
Landscaping with Fruit, by Lee Reich
The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, by Rosalind Creasy
New York Nut Growers Association: nynga.org
Northern Nut Growers Association: nutgrowing.org
Local commercial orchards mentioned above:
Breezy Hill Orchard, Staatsburg
Stone Ridge Orchard, Stone Ridge
Wightman Fruit Farm, Kerhonkson

Posted by lil' Liza on 7:21 AM. Filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0

1 comments for Trees for Bees

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