Work party After-Action-Report

Time-on-task

My helper showed up! Five hours time-on-task in the Upper and Hill Orchards.

Some of the time was invested in getting my helper started. Once he got going and he knew what to do, he didn't slow down. He was not even deterred by Poison Ivy.

He kept feeding the two burn barrels with branches pulled out of the unmowed area immediately beneath the apple trees.

I "humped" water with 300 PPM nitrogen to the newly planted trees. 

A thunderstorm blew through about two-and-a-half hours into the gig, so we broke for lunch. We picked up a whopping 0.1" of rain, barely enough to wet the dust. 

After lunch we worked another 2-1/2 hours

He kept burning branches. He was unfazed by the heat and humidity.

I humped more water (about 230 gallons, in-total). I broadcast clover seed, limestone and potassium chloride at a rate of approximately one pound/75 pounds/25 pounds respectively over 5000 square feet of ground.

I sprayed a half-dozen apple trees with 1% calcium chloride to improve fruit quality. Some varieties such as Honeycrisp (which I don't grow) and its parent Keepsake are unsalable without an aggressive calcium program. When I say "sprayed...apple trees", what I really mean is I made sure that I thoroughly covered the FRUIT with the spray. Calcium is not very mobile within the tree. You actually need to put the spray on the outside of the fruit and it will suck it in and absorb it. 

On a dry afternoon you can watch the droplets shrink and disappear as the fruit absorb the liquid over a time period of ten seconds. It is pretty amazing to watch something you think of as solid act like a thirsty sponge.

Looking ahead

I didn't get water to all of the baby trees. So I need to finish that.

The ten-day look-ahead by the weather-guessers has no significant amount of rain predicted. That means I get to do it again in a week. The good news is that all of the new trees are still actively growing. Their twigs have not set terminal buds. That bodes well for hitting or exceeding my target of 24" of shoot extension.

The not-great news is that several of the trees with a good fruit load need a boost because their shoot extension runted-out. A 1% spray of urea solution is the quickest way to kick them in the dupa. A tree with inadequate leafs to ripen the fruit produce too much insipid fruit and then tend to relapse into alternate bearing. I want to avoid that if I can.

My current plan is to spend tomorrow morning at the homestead. I am expecting a contractor to do a site-visit and make a quote. I can pull weeds before he comes.

Afterward, I can return to the Hill Orchard and finish humping water and bless some trees with a foliar application of urea solution.

Random information

Many species of butterflies crave salt...good, old sodium chloride.

The males need sodium for sperm motility and the "gift" of the sodium from the males improves the female's flight efficiency and her ability to find prime larval food sources and then lay the fertilized eggs on them.

High quality research on the topic is scarce but from what is available, an educated guess of 1000 PPM sodium (roughly a one-and-a-half teaspoons of salt per gallon of water or 2.5 grams of salt per liter of water) is a conservative starting point. 

The solution can be put in a traditional "bird bath" and some kind of drinking platforms installed.

Those platforms can be a mound of sand or some rafts of wooden clothes pins or some foam packing-peanuts can be floated in the bath. The butterflies need something solid to stand on while they imbibe their fix of sodium.