We have a small orchard with trees that are more mature than the thousands of baby fruit trees we have planted in the forest over the past few years. This year our avocado, peach, guayaba, and mandarin trees are doing particularly well. We enjoyed a surplus of avocados over the summer and into Autumn. Our mandarin tree produces nearly year round, and our guayaba is just starting to crank out large, yellow fruit. We have 4 peach trees that yield small, juicy peaches in the Spring and Summer. And we have hundreds of capulines, a native cherry tree, growing throughout the forest – the one in the orchard is huge and produces lots of small cherries.
Our other trees include a plum tree that is still quite small but last year produced about 40 sweet little plums, a few apple trees that need a bit of care (compost and water would likely help), a nispero (loquat), a macadamia nut tree which doesn’t fruit, and a pomegranate that produces about 3 fruits a year.
Lori, a volunteer who stayed with us for two weeks, spent a lot of her time giving our orchard some much needed pruning. Below she is pruning our mandarin tree.
We prune in order to increase yield and quality of fruits. Minimal pruning to young fruit trees will help shape the growth into a healthy plant.
Thanks to Lori! Below she is climbing one of our peach trees to cut off dead branches.
WAY TO GO LORI