North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Christopher Kennel <ckennel@gmail.com>]

For several years I've been interested in joining a local fruit  
growing group similar to the Midwest Fruit Explorers, Home Orchard  
Society, California Rare Fruit Growers, or Backyard Fruit Growers, but  
to my knowledge none exists for the front range of Colorado.  So I'm  
starting the Front Range Fruit Growers, and I hope that it will grow  
into a fun organization that helps local fruit growers connect with  
each other.

If you live along the front range of Colorado or possibly Wyoming and  
are interested in growing, grafting, propagating, and experimenting with
edible fruit-producing plants along the front range of the Rocky  
Mountains, you are welcome to join.

I envision that the Front Range Fruit Growers group will serve as  
resource for people to learn about and share their experiences with  
growing fruit along Colorado's front range. We don't have a lot of  
formal information about how specific cultivars perform in our erratic  
environment, but I know there are quite a few backyard growers with  
experiences about what works and what doesn't here.

Hopefully this informal group will encourage a new generation of  
backyard fruit aficionados.  Possible activities could include an  
annual scion wood exchange, grafting and budding workshops, orchard  
tours, the development of a record of which cultivars perform well in  
our area, and raising orchard mason bees, provided there is member  
interest in any of these things.  Something to get excited about and  
possibly involved with is a couple of major experimental fruit plots  
in Douglas County, CO that are getting set up this year.

If you would like to be part of the Front Range Fruit Growers, feel  
free to sign up at the link below (membership is free):

https://groups.google.com/group/front-range-fruit-growers?hl=en

Alternatively, you can send an email to me and I can add you to the  
list.

Feel free to publicize the Front Range Fruit Growers group to anyone  
you think may be interested in it.

All the best,
Chris Kennel
Denver, CO
> From hartmansfruit@msn.com  Mon Mar 21 18:16:16 2011
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Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Pears & Apples
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Hi Jim,

I have grown the Warren pear on OHXF333 and it never even bloomed when it 
was 4 or 5 years old and it was a huge tree.  Then I grafted it onto Quince 
C which is one of the smallest growing rootstock for European pears and it 
has been blooming and fruiting profusely at 3 and 4 years of age.  If you 
can grow pears on quince at your location you might give that a try.

Bob
Western Washington

-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Freeman
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 8:26 AM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] Pears & Apples

Funny you mentioned pears, as I was tying limbs on my home trees this
weekend. I noticed on the ones I tied down last year that 45 degrees
does not seem to be flat enough for the best bloom production. The limbs
that finished around 90 degrees seemed to have a lot more blooms than
the others. The crotch angle does not seem to matter as much as the main
body of the limb. Most of my pears are in their fifth leaf, so it seems
to me they should all be producing decent amounts of fruit. The only
ones to have produced more that 1-2 pears are the Orients. They have
produced reliable & large crops since they were in their 3rd leaf. Our
Maxine & Moonglow had a few blooms last year but only averaged 1 fruit
per tree while Orient averaged 3 bushels. Luckily, all three have lots
of blooms this year, so I am less worried about knocking the odd bloom
off.

My Warren pears finally have a few blossoms this year and I am looking
forward to getting a few pears from them. Funny, but the smaller one has
10x the blooms of my larger more beautiful specimen. Wonder why this
happened? They are side by side in the same orchard with identical
conditions. The smaller one nearly died the year it was planted
(2006)due to some problem at the graft that caused 80% of the tree to
die. I cut away all the dead wood and it has slowly grown into a decent
looking tree that is half the size of my other Warren. It would be
really funny if my smallest runt produces the most fruit.

After two very wet weeks in March, we finally had good weather this week
to finish preparing a couple acres of new ground at our Murray County
orchard. It looks like we will have room for a large block of Pink Lady
and fill the rest with 32 other cultivars that are new to us. We will
also have enough replants to completely fill our old orchard. Hopefully
the weather will hold this week and allow us to get all these trees in
the ground. Once we finish our 2011 planting, we will have 97 varieties
of apples. Checkout our website and let me know what varieties (that
grow well in the South) you think we need to add on our way to 100 apple
cultivars.

Thanks!
Jim Freeman
Freedom Farms LLC
In Beautiful North Georgia
www.freedomfruit.net

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 14:51:47 -0600
From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>

I have pulled down the uprights and tied them to things, it does seem to
get fruit spurs on them a year sooner.  Right now though they are a
forest of uprights and I keep meaning to pull them down..... I'm afraid
that in windy weather they will whip back and forth and knock the blooms
or small fruit off each other.  Donna

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