The Orchard

Having failed to keep this blog up to date I just realized that I never mentioned the fact that last year (2012) I decided to organize the fruit trees into an orchard.

I selected 15, more on that number later, fruit trees that where spread out all over the place and took me forever to water and moved them to an area just behind the shed where they had sufficient space, light and most importantly close to a water source so I could automate the irrigation.

Not much to look at, but it is the middle of summer

The list of fruit trees include:

Orange
Pear
Apricot
Cheery
Fig
Apple
Granado
Hazelnut
Pistacho (2, 1 male and 1 female)

Almond
Kaki
Azufaifu (Jujube)
Nispero (Loquat)

The layout is basically a 4 by 4 grid, the more astute will have notices that this makes 16 yet I only have 15, the reason for this is simple, in my grid there was already growing a Hawthorn and so I just left it :-)

Water is now a simple 15 minute job which is automated, I've saved myself hours, why didn't I think of this earlier. So far all the trees have appreciated the move and I plan to add two more this autumn, a walnut tree and something else, yet to be decided..... stay tuned

update - 26-4-2014
Added a walnut to the list :-)

The Great Audit - or the arboreal equivalent of the dooms day book

The Great Audit 

It's been another hot long summer here in Candeleda, nothing new there, but today the clouds partially cover the sun and that makes working in the garden somewhat more tolerable, tearing myself away from my newly discovered Chrome apps, learning to type is one of them ;-) I decided to count how many trees we had, assuming they all survive the summer.

To start with let me point out that I counted the trees on the basis of

1. I only counted mature trees, mostly anything over 1. 5 meters in height
2. to count as a single tree they needed to be clearly individual trees and not just a tree with multiple trunks etc
3. my numbers are precise but not exact

So  the numbers are

Pyrenean Oak (Quercus pyrenaica) -  249

Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)  48
European Hackberry (Celtis australis) 31
Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) -  14



The Majority are in the top half, which makes senses.

Some interesting observations, at least to me.
The Oak is by far the most common tree but it is also the one whose long term survival is most in doubt due to the disease they are exposed to, another has dries up this year

While there are more Hackberries than Ash trees, they are nowhere near as big so they are Ash trees and so the impression on has is that there are few of them

While the second most common tree is the Hawthorn, few are more than just shrubs, still I include them here as there are two or three examples well over  meters in height

I'll up date this from time to time, just to see how things develop, but I expect to see the oak tree numbers decline over the next few years, hopefully I'll have found a sustainable way of planting new trees