Another really nice day here. It started grey and dull though but still rather warm and no wind. I didn’t feel like doing much at the beginning but then the clouds left and the sun reached us so I thought that I really couldn’t sit indoors all day doing nothing, so instead I went outside and started to prune the last apple tree, the one I once sowed and that gives delicious apples. The problem is that most of the apples get bad already on the tree.
Already from the beginning I shaped it as a fan, You know those we hold in our hands and not the electric ones 🙂 🙂 The reason I did this was because it is planted just beside the fence so half of it would be growing out in the cow pasture and most likely be eaten on by the cows. The problem is that I had done very little with it for a few years now so it was so dense that no air really could reach the apples growing behind the leafs and therefore were much easier hit by fungus.
I went against all the recommendations I have when it comes to pruning apple trees (or any trees for that matter). Normally I say that when pruning apple trees only cut of a third of what You really want to cut and do it in autumn, preferable when the tree is about to lose its leafs. I The tree is then preparing to slow down and really doesn’t care about losing the leafs because it would anyway. By doing this it will not grow as many new branches as it would if You prune it in spring. The next year take half of what is left for the same reason and the third year the rest. After that there’s really not much to cut away. Today however it felt like I cut away half the tree 🙂 🙂 I realised that some branches now were so big that I would get a much harder job next year if I only took a third of what I wanted but I did at least do the job now when it is autumn 🙂 🙂
After that I collected all of what I had cut off from all the trees and started up the compost grinder. This took almost half a day to do but it was well worth it. Now there’s lot of open space in and under the trees so air (well wind) can dry up the air as much as possible and funguses get harder to destroy so much fruit. I also cut down the grape elder bush that are the fence just under the biggest apple tree. There’s still much of the trunk left but I’ll take that with the chain saw later on. It has been fighting for space with a Japanese climbing rose and none of them would give up, The rose has also been prunes by the cows in the pasture outside for a long time 🙂 🙂 I’ll cut it dow as well and then let it grow back up again. I’ll try to keep it low though because it isn’t called climbing rose for nothing 🙂 🙂 It has one advantage though, it has almost no thorns 🙂
They are guessing we’ll have the same kind of weather for a few more days and then it will be cooler and I guess autumn will get a grip on us. Not looking forward to it but then again back in the days today had most likely been the day when we had our first frost. It always happened around September sixth. Normally I liked that because that killed off the last annoying flies but since we almost have none of those (still lots of other flies but they really don’t care about annoying either humans nor animals) I think frost can wait for a month or so to arrive 🙂 On another note, today they had the annual dachshund parade in our capital and 900 had said they would be there 🙂 Also the heavy rains we were supposed to have happened further north. Roads have been flushed away, a train derailed and people were warned no to drive anywhere. So I guess I really shouldn’t be annoyed over the fact it didn’t fall here 🙂
Have a great day!
The Cottage by the crane lake. 