When we purchased our house in 2008 we were excited to find a decent amount of fruit producing plants around the place. There were two great blueberry bushes and three apple trees. The blueberries were in pretty bad shape (not pruned or fertilized for what looked like a very long time) and the apple trees hadn't been touched the last two years because the house was in foreclosure. I gave the blueberries a heavy pruning and a good fertilizing and our first year we ate and ate off the bushes and froze 10 quart ziplock bags of berries. This year's crop is looking even better as the bushes look amazing after another good pruning.
Our two semi-dwarf apple trees did a great job producing wonderful eating and baking apples, but the huge old Gravenstein tree only produced about 10 apples. The year prior (according to the neighbor) had been even worse for the poor tree. We gave it another heavy pruning this year and we hope to get a better crop of apples off of it. They are delicious apples!!
This year we are trying our hand at raspberries. I loved eating raspberries straight from the vine when I was growing up. We installed a small row of vines we received from a friend that will hopefully produce berries this first year. Yum!!
Mid-spring 2009 we planted four more semi-dwarf fruit trees just beyond the garden. We have a pear, frost peach, italian prune and plum tree. I'm not sure how great the peach will do, but the others are designed for this region and so far this year are covered in blossoms. We had a very warm February (the warmes on record) and a lot of our plants were coaxed out of their dormant state. We are getting some wild weather now (rain, frost, hail, etc.) and hopefully it won't damage the tender blossoms too much.
Hopefully our mason bees weren't too put off by the cold weather and are getting out there to pollinate! We'll have to wait and see.
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