CANADIAN REGION:What are you doing in September 2019

It will soon be the Autumnal Equinox and the daylight hours will be fewer and the temperature will once again slip down towards winter.  Brrr.

But still there is plenty to do; one of my tasks is to have a go at my compost pile, turn it over or something as I have really neglected it this year. then spread the good stuff where it is needed.

What is on your itinerary?  My main one is to process the apples on my tree that has an abundance this year. I have canned some, eaten many of them and now I am into dehydrating as many as possible.

You resurrected that little apple tree and now it is thanking you in abundance.

My dear sanderson. sometimes abundance can be far too much. I have spent another hour this morning preparing these apples and have six new trays beginning their session in the dehydrator. That hour includes clearing up and disposing of the apples waste into the compost pile.  I cannot do any more today until the present ones have finished drying.

No one seems to want free apples, even though you give them the best ones off the ones that you picked. People seem very happy to be given a canned jar of apples when you have provided the apples, the sugar, the work and the jar itself.

Very few people want to pick fruit from a tree, be it apple, red or yellow plums, etc.
When I had my old neighbour living next door to me he was happy to have all the windfalls that he picked up himself, and gave me apple juice that he made every year. In return I gave him lots of dried apples and even then he gave me apple pies and tarts that he made himself. 

Can you tell that I miss him? He and old George the other side of menext door kept my driveway clear of snow every winter and assured me they would do it all the time they were they.  R.I.P. Art and George.

Today, for the first time, I did not pick two full pails of apples. I think now I am on the home stretch. These apples are the best I have had. So much larger  and as I pick them some of them straight off the tree, so much easier to work with. If I go away next year, I will make sure I go earlier so that I have time to thin the apples, also the tree will be much smaller so that I do not climb into the upper branches which I did last year, but not this year.  I intend to make sure that every branch is with my reach using no more than a step stool, and that no branch hangs over my neighbour's border line. 

As a gardener, five weeks is far to long to be away.  Perhaps I should  travel in the winter?  Any time except high summer?

My apple tree is still dominating my life.  Each day I go out and pick the apples, mostly windfalls, but some lovely ones still on the tree that I try to use immediately to place in my dehydrator as these apples spoil so quickly.  They are Transparencies.

Then they took me the best part of an hour an to prepare, fill my six trays and clean up, but now as the apples are a better quality and larger it only takes half the time as the apples are getting larger and the ones I pick off the tree are  perfect so there is no cutting out bruised bits, I discard green apples, or too small etc. The ones I collect daily can now be processed without losing any  good ones.  It still takes the same time to dry but then that allows me to do other things.

I belong to a women's group that meets Wednesdays, so I took twenty packets of dried apples to see if anyone wanted them.  It seemed they did so the packets were given to anyone interested who liked to eat them as a snack, or re-hydrate to use in cooking. We had a group cooking session and yesterday I came away with a beef stew in two containers, enough for four dinners, and also ate lunch there consisting of the same stew plus a dessert.  I think in the near future someone will be making apple pie as some of the packets were given to the group itself.

Meanwhile there are stil hundreds of lovely looking apples still left on the tree, and in a few moment I will go and collect another bucket of apples.

That is what you get when you treat an old and failing apple tree with wood chips.  Just allow time to work its magic then you can complain of an over abundance.

So long as you are patient, OG  Next year you will get lots more leaves, then the year after you will really see a change.  The third year was when I had the best apples ever.  Trees do need lots of water and as I was away this year and it did not rain during the five weeks, I was so surprised that now I am getting lovely magget-free and tasty apples

My tree was old when I moved in there in 1996 and only produced little maggety apples.  I know now that a tree needs to be in good health to repel these invaders that suck the life out of apples.  Next year I will have to prune it so that I can reach the top of the tree standing on a step-stool.  All the best ones are out of my physical reach.

After the first lot of chips, the following year I placed another layer.

When al the leaves are down, the tree is rather an ugly sight.  One trunk and another branch off to one side. Yet all the growth has been from there and it looks quite shapely when in leaf. Good luck in getting your chips and getting them down before winter so that the ground can store the water.

Wood chips have helped cut down with watering my orange tree in the summer. The chips and dead leaves slowly break down during the rainy season.