June 27, 2026

It’s summer in the orchard but still not too hot to spend all day out there. I spent the morning cleaning up prunings that are still scattered around and cutting out more fire blight. Vilberie is a one of those apt to get hammered, and this year it did. It’s a late-season English bittersweet that leafs-out late and blooms late. We have two trees. Both got hit. Still we keep it. I like late-ripening fruit, and Vilberie has great potential for our cider despite the challenges.

In the afternoon we mulched and covered the potatoes with row-cover fabric. We use the “Agribon” year after year, taping (decorating?) the inevitable holes with pieces of duct tape. The fabric does a good job of protecting the plants from the Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) without resorting to spray or picking the beetles and larvae off the foliage which is laborious (and gross) but does work. We prefer the fabric. We also weeded and back-filled in a new asparagus trench. We plant the asparagus in foot-deep trenches, filling in the soil as the plants emerge. It’s an old method that has proven to be tried and true.

Fenway Park lives! June, 2026

Meanwhile the Sox beat the Yankees for three in a row. Unexpectedly good news. (The Sox have had their challenges this year.) I did make it to a game with a good buddy a couple weeks ago on the spur of the moment. Fenway Park is a living orchard too. The grass is so green! (They do need a few apple trees.)

June 26, 2026

Potentilla norvegica, June 26, 2026

The low-growing, yellow-flowering, herbaceous Potentilla norvegica is now in bloom here and there throughout theorchards. I love them. Although Potentilla norvegica’s common name is Norwegian Cinquefoil, it’s likely native to central Maine. It’s definitely found a home here on the farm. The genus Potentilla includes a rather amazing five hundred species around the world, both woody and herbaceous with flowers of nearly every color in the rainbow. In a world often polluted with garish and electric colors (including some of the selections of Potentilla), Potentilla norvegica’s yellow is subtle, soft, and magnetic. Subtle, soft and magnetic: not a bad combo.

June 25, 2026

The past two days have been exceptionally glorious (how’s that for superlatives) in the orchards and gardens on the farm. And they only get better as evening approaches. It’s tough to come in for dinner before 8 PM. It’s just too nice out there. But, alas, I did.

We have been weeding, cutting out fire blight strikes and doing some planting in the nursery. We’ve removed most of the fire blight strikes now. but I’m still checking every day. We planted another 50+ apple seedlings. These are primarily OP seedlings of Kingston Black and Charlamoff. Kingston Black is that famous English bittersharp cider apple that’s also famously difficult to grow. But, wow, it does make nice cider. Last fall we dabbled in cooking with KB, and it performed well. Charlamoff is a Duchess-type that I suspect could make a superior home-grown standard seedling rootstock. It is also a great cooking apple.

Time to get rid of the ants and add new sugar syrup

The feeder is pretty quiet these days. We aren’t even keeping it full. If anyone drops by to say hello, it’s the Bluejays and the Mourning Doves. The Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are still visiting the hummingbird feeder multiple times a day. They are our summer-time pals. Although we only get the Ruby-throated hummers in central Maine (Archilochus colubris), they are endlessly entertaining. Twice I’ve handled a humming bird. Both times I was able to perform rescues of hummers caught inside a building where the door should have been closed. Two fantastic moments. They are so small. And I’m positive that they knew I was there to help. Keep those doors closed in the summer!

June 24, 2026

A small fire blight strike, June 24, 2026

Today we snipped off dozens of mostly small fire blight strikes from infected trees around the orchard. The majority of damage is concentrated in one small area of about an acre, which is the same area that was the hardest hit in 2020, the last really bad year for fire blight. Other areas of the orchard—even with the same cultivars—have no strikes at all. Could it be that the bacterium has been lurking in that one area for the past six years, waiting for the right conditions to return?

Skylar harvested several wheel-barrow loads of comfrey from around the apple trees and filled a large barrel. She then filled the barrel with water. The comfrey will steep and ferment for a week or so and then we’ll spray the comfrey tea on the apple trees.

June 23, 2026

It rained all morning so I began the annual process of cleaning out the root cellar. As you might imagine, most apples were ready for the compost pile. But some were not. Those still in good shape were set aside to check out in the next few days. As I looked through dozens of bags, I came across a small box that still had the mailing label dated September 9, 2024. With a bit of trepidation I opened the box. In it were several apples that looked like dried prunes (no surprise). But wrapped in a small piece of newsprint was one apple in almost perfect shape. It had been in the root cellar with no refrigeration for an unbelievable 21 months! Incredible. It did have a couple of rotten spots. We’ll forgive it for that.

The apple in question was labeled #131. It’s a seedling, selected by breeder and friend, Ike Kerschner of North Star Orchards in Pennsylvania. Our tasting notes from September 16, 2024 include, “juicy, crisp, subtly tart” and more tellingly, “skin is too thick.” Maybe it’s that thick skin that enabled the apple to keep for nearly two years. Although we have several of Ike’s apples on trial here, we don’t have #131. I’ll graft it next spring and see how this super keeper apple likes it here in central Maine.

June 22, 2026

As we plunge into summer, weeding in some form or another may be our #1 activity. I suppose that can be a bit overwhelming. Some might even say, depressing. “All we do is weed!” But I don’t think of it that way. It’s actually not really weeding at all. It’s all about compost ingredient acquisition. AKA compost creation.

Layering the compost

Although we do purchase a few soil amendments from time to time, the primary fertilizer on the farm is compost, compost we concoct right here. And the largest ingredient by far is plant material. Where do we get most of the plant material we put into the heaps? From the gardens and the nurseries of course. We grow it. We grow our compost. We grow it in our high quality soil in between our young apple trees. We grow it next to our lettuce, spinach, corn, kale and broccoli. You might even say, compost is our most important crop. After harvesting, the weeds go into our layered heaps for a year or two before returning as “black gold” to the gardens and nurseries to feed the next generation of compost plants of the future.

June 21, 2026

Sparkle, it’s summer.

It’s summer, glorious summer! The solstice was last night at 10:22 eastern time. It’s time to go jump into some water. Fantastic fruit will be coming our way soon. Strawberries. Raspberries. Blueberries. And… in only about four and a half weeks: apples. It’s been a good year so far. A suitably cold winter, a slow, cool spring with no scary warm stretches, plenty of rain, plenty of sun. Despite the recent Fire Blight and the ever-curious and sometimes chaotic behavior of those weird creatures we call humans, the apples trees are once again—as they’ve been doing for the three million years (or so)— sprouting new leaves and a dazzling and mind-blowing assortment of fruit. Let summer begin.

June 20, 2026

We sprayed the other half the orchard with our combination of Surround clay powder, Dipel (BT), liquid Kelp, liquid Fish, and “EM1” (effective microbes). I’m happy to see the fruitlets growing among the leaves, on trees throughout the orchards.

Spraying the orchard, June 20, 2026

Although yesterday I found Fire Blight in one area, today I found almost none. My “scientifically observational guess” is that the bacterium had been present in some sections of the orchard while not in others. In the next few days we’ll cut out all the strikes (infected branches) we can find and hopefully nip a potential mess in the bud!

June 19, 2026

Fireblight June 19, 2026

We sprayed half the orchard with a combination of Surround clay powder, Dipel (BT), liquid Kelp, liquid Fish, and “EM1” (effective microbes). The Nursery orchard block has a lot of Fire Blight. When the bacterium Erwinia amylovora is present in the orchard along with a simultaneous combination of warm temperatures, moisture (rain or even heavy dew) and apple trees, pears or quince in bloom, it makes for the perfect conditions for an infection that causes branch tips to wilt and die. It’s ugly. Any infected branch tips should be cut back. The trimmings can be left on the ground to dry out and become innocuous. Or you can compost them or take them to the landfill. It’s a bummer, but we’ve had it before and most of the trees should survive.

June 18, 2026

Nettles in bloom, June 18, 2026

Today we got an all-day rain. It was gloriously wet. It’s nice when this happens. It’s irrigation from the sky. It’s a lot of water not pulled out of the ground. Somewhere I read that, given the choice, plants prefer rain water over tap water. And it’s better for us too because the plants feed us, clothe us, house us and heat us. We should probably be paying them but, darn, they don’t care much about money. So I guess we should treat them with humility and gratitude. Humility because they’re a whole lot more evolved than we are. And gratitude because they make it all possible. All of it.

Two days ago I started fermenting a 40 gallon barrel of nettle tea. I noticed today it’s already starting to froth up. It will be powerful stuff in a few days. Then I’ll spray it on the trees.

June 17, 2026

For the past three days I’ve been working solo, weeding, mulching and mowing in the BRC orchard. Everyone (Cammy) is away. Well, not everyone. There I am, crouched under the low branches of the apple tree snipping away the pencil-like stems of the bracken ferns and the big hairy leaves of comfrey. I look up and there’s not one-not two-but three collies laying on the grassy path between the trees. Just hanging out, observing my humanish behavior. Perhaps they assume I’m doing something important despite the fact that they may not understand my logic. I’m not sure I do either.

The collie in the sky, June 17, 2026

Collies are wonderful dogs. This week we have three. Ours, and two of her best friends. They bark at night and keep the evil critters at bay. They love to sleep out on the porch even when it’s —20F. They don’t go in the gardens or chase chickens once you explain to them the deal. And they hang out with you in the shade while you do important things out in the orchard.

Today the weeding effort moved up to the Nursery. Skylar Bodeo-Lomicky joined me, and we weeded this year’s grafted trees. Despite the fact that the trees are growing well, the weeds are growing about twice as fast.

June 16, 2026

Viburnum lentago, June 16, 2026

At this time of year, the Orchard Report could be entirely devoted to listing what’s in bloom. I hope plants forgive me for missing them. Like the credits at the end of the book when the author apologizes to those who helped make it all possible but who were missed in the shout-out.

Today the nod goes to Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) which predates my arrival on “The Land” by a few thousand years but doesn’t seem too upset that we’re here. The large shrubs are thriving in the BRC amongst the apple trees, comfrey, nettles and all the rest. It’s beautiful in bloom, doesn’t seem to bother anyone and provides lots of small berries in the fall for the birds.

June 15, 2026

It rained for much of the morning. We love the rain. No outside irrigation required today. By noon it cleared up and was perfect outdoor working weather.

Buttercups and clover, June 15, 2026

I returned to the BRC and continued weeding the apples, all the while taking notice of what’s blooming and what is ready to harvest. The Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia), Buttercups (Ranunculus acris) various Clovers—red and white—and Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) are all flowering. We’ll harvest the Chamomile soon and dry it for tea. The buttercups attract pollinators. They’re also useful if you wonder about lactose issues around butter. Hold the buttercups under your chin to see if butter is really good for you. My chin glows. I also cut a lot of bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), a tall, single-stemmed fern that spreads from rhizomes and shades out all low-growing plants in its path. It makes good mulch too.

June 14, 2026

Today was warm, sunny and quite windy. I spent the day in the BRC orchard mowing the paths and cutting back blackberries, comfrey and nettles—all three now in bloom—from around the apple trees. If we have enough moisture, we should have an excellent blackberry crop. I piled most of what I cut as mulch around the trees, although I set aside piles of nettles (Urtica dioica) which will be steeped and fermented in a barrel, then sprayed on the trees as a pesticide and a nutrient. (What goes around, comes around—will the circle be unbroken etc.) In the early evening I harvested asparagus. We’re still getting many spears daily that are tender and delicious. We’ll stop cutting in a week or two and allow the remaining spears to grow to maturity.

Comfrey, June 14, 2026

June 10, 2026

Skylar helped me plant apple seedlings up in the nursery. About half of them are from selected crosses we hand-pollinated in the spring of 2025. We crossed Frostbite (MN 447) flowers with three different cultivars: Black Oxford, Gray Pearmain and Westfield-Seek-No-Further. I stratified the seed over the winter and have grown out about 100 seedlings this spring.

Because each seedling is genetically unique (these are not grafted), someday the seedlings just might be selected and named, later to become the insanely popular cultivars of the future. New varieties are being born as I write! Look for them to appear in your grocery store cooler in twenty years or so.

June 9, 2026

The topworked grafts that I did around the farm are all leafing-out now. Yours should be too. Go check them out. The tiny green leaves should be emerging from the scions. These are the bark grafts done almost exactly four weeks ago. It looks as though we had excellent luck this year. Maybe even 100% take. No need to do much with them now except imagine the new and interesting fruit we’ll get in the future. At some point later in the season the young growth may get long and leggy and might benefit from an improvised splint to keep it from breaking off. But not now. Now it’s time to marvel at yet another miracle on the farm.

June 8, 2026

The abandoned feeder, June 8, 2026

For several weeks we have been filling the bird feeder every day—sometimes twice daily. The farm had become an avian pitstop on the flyway to points north. Some mornings it was a traffic jam at the feeder. But today, hardly a seed was eaten. Migration season is winding down. Some ornithologists caution about feeding the birds all summer. I suppose that could be an issue, although the birds seem to be well aware that there’s now plenty of food elsewhere in the orchards and around the farm. Within a week or so we’ll stop filling the feeder for the summer.

Planting season is also winding down. Time to get the last plants into the ground. The threat of frost is over (knock, knock). I did plant two small apple trees at the neighbors today. That’s a risk. They were leafed out. I’ll hope they rally and thrive.

June 7, 2026

Pagoda Dogwood, June 7, 2026

Some claim that it only rains on weekends in Maine in the spring. Climatologists (the few that remain) confirm that this is the case. They have determined that the rain in Maine has been scheduled by the Farm Gods to hold off during the weekdays to give farmers time to do their planting and then rain off and on all weekend while the farmers are relaxing and sleeping in. (We hope.) Meanwhile, the tourists who have driven all this way to enjoy the rock-bound coast are unhappy about all that moisture. Ah well.

June 6, 2026

Viburnum trilobum, June 6, 2026

Cammy and I completed spraying Surround on a couple dozen Finley Lane apple trees that we missed the other day. The warmer temperatures mean the Plum Curculios are almost certainly out and about. Time to cover the trees with a good spray of Surround. I’ll spray again in a week or so.

It’s also time to plant the potatoes. We had selected our favorite potatoes from the root cellar a few weeks ago and then “chitted” them in crates in the living room, covered with cloth to keep out the light. That process gets them growing. Then today, Cammy laid them in the trenches we had dug and filled with compost and covered them with soil. In a few days after a good rain (please) we’ll cover them with a thick layer of hay mulch to keep down the weeds and keep in the moisture.

June 5, 2026

I sprayed Blossom Protect and Buffer Protect on the late blooming apples. These are primarily French cider apples which bloom well after all the other cultivars are past petal fall. Because they flower late, they can be more susceptible to fireblight which thrives and spreads when apples are in bloom and weather is warm and wet. These cultivars are some of our favorites, and we love growing them despite the risk.

Here’s the current list of our late bloomers:

• Bigalow Tree (russet Maine)

• Blake (dessert and cooking UK)

• Boutelle Lisieux (cider France)

• Cartigny (cider France)

• Cherry Norman (cider UK)

• Coat Jersey (cider UK)

• Dabinett (cider UK)

• Doux Normandy (cider UK or France)

• Frequin Audievre (cider France)

• Frequin Tardive (cider France)

• Frostproof (bitter cider? mid-Atlantic US)

• Hagloe Crab (cider UK)

• Peau d’Ane (cider France)

• Ribston Pippin (dessert UK)

• Sissipuk (red-fleshed crab Canada)

• Vilberie (cider UK)