Our Liberty Apple trees will be blooming soon. The buds are setting and two on one of the trees opened today. I supposed many will open tomorrow and Monday. The problem with this is that the tree that needs to bloom so that the Liberty blossoms can be fertilized is our MacFree, which rarely has put out more than a handful of blooms and usually those only open when the Liberty trees have nearly finished there bloom. It’s frustrating since we bought these trees through a catalog nursery which said these two are good together for making apples. Hmph. We do need to trim down the MacFree, it may be growing all wrong, from the root stock more than from the MacFree. These are Semi-Dwarf apple trees. So really I want to get Crab Apple trees … they’ll do the job of looking nice and helping out the Liberty Apple blossoms. We don’t have any plans to get any Crab Apple trees installed though, at this point.
One day I hope we can move from this property and I’ll be sad to leave these Apple trees. I’ve wanted to do good by them and get sprays and helps for them, so far they are au’ naturel except for some pruning and fireblight spray help in past years. It costs money to upkeep apple trees. Money that we would have had but didn’t have after all the job changes in the past years since we got the trees. So we got the trees with good intentions.
If we are able to go sooner than later, or perhaps get some land first that we will build upon … then we could move these trees, but I wouldn’t want to do that later than sooner. I’d feel better about it moving them to another place where we would be with them for longer, while we still had this property and could replace the trees here with something else before selling. It’s a sort of silly attachment to the trees that I have. I don’t think they are doing as well here as they would do on another property. We got the trees right when I first was pregnant with Victoria, and we planted them after we had just known for certain our second child was on the way for a week or so. They have special meaning therefore. I chose them for the type and name and they ended up being more special due to baby stuff afterthefact.
So it goes that we have another year of Spring Fertilization beginning and little hope of a nice apple crop once again as well. If the bee population is higher it would be helpful, and if there are other apple trees in the area that could be a help under higher bee population conditions. I would have bees on our own larger property, for fertilization of apples and veggy garden, and for honey. I won’t get into that sort of thing in our little subdivision though. So we are dependant on whatever conditions prevail … and that will be blessed by God this year I hope, so we can have some apples in September, just a few would be nice. Liberty apples are so crisp and sweet. So very nice. We have had only a few but never enough nice ones to have for long. Just a few for a day or two’s use, then none. Or not even that. Disease and yucky who-knows-what kind of things take most of the apples that form. So I’m anxious for the day when I can have pro-active sprays to increase yield, and bees and other trees to aide fertilization!