First Fruits.

Since I just archived about the garden, I might as well update on our edibles in the front yard also.

In the front we have an apple tree and three blueberry bushes.  The apple tree we planted last Fall and the blueberries we just planted this Spring.

It's all good for my patience.  There's not a lot of rewards or fruits of our labor.  I wish I could fast-forward them twenty years...but I'll wait.

The tree we planted is a Honeycrisp apple tree.  If you're at the tree lot and all the trees are the same price, you might as well get the best tasting, most expensive apple!

We were told it would be three-five years until it would bear any fruit.  We didn't expect anything this year, but did get one, perfect little apple.

 

 

Our tree looks better photographed up close because the deer got to it earlier this Spring.  We get to see lots of wildlife, like deer and turkeys, out our front window, and it's fun for the kids.  The deer especially are beautiful to watch, but are just really big pests!  So, our apple tree is completely enclosed by 4 foot (maybe taller?) wire.  Once the tree is more mature we should be able to take that down.

The kids loved to check the apple everyday.  We've see a gazillion apples before, but this one was our apple and so much more special!

 

 

We sliced it open and cut it into sixths for dinner one night.  It wasn't much, but it tasted wonderful!  Crisp, sweet, juicy, and warm off the tree.

 

 

The blueberries are young and still also not fruitful.  Because of the deer they are completely enclosed by wire...we are taking no chances!

I'm excited for when they are bigger.  Not only will they hopefully gets lots of blueberries, but their leaves are beautiful all year.  You can see here that they are changing for the Fall.

Blueberries are not native to this area, and so we do have to amend the soil.  We don't do it often, but we have a solution with ammonium sulfate in it, and we mulched the bushes with pine needles.  I just read that you can add coffee grounds to the soil as well.  I'm going to try this instead of just throwing those away every morning! 

 



 

Like with our apple tree, we had one blueberry this year!  In hindsight, we maybe should have plucked this off right away.  Blueberries have shallow spread out roots, and it's apparently good for them to focus on building their roots (and not growing fruit) for the first three years.  But, like I said before we are learning as we go!

We were trying to figure out how we were going to share one blueberry amongst 6 (or at least 4), but as we were talking about it Adeline picked it off and ate it.  The report is that it was good!