Mid-winter observations: July 2025

A year has now passed since I took up the orchard and as the wintery days keep us bundled up near the fire, there is an opportunity to consider my experiences and lessons learned. While there is still so much to learn, here are a couple of mid-winter observations.

Pruning is a summer sport. In June of 2024, the fruit trees were all choked with full long vertical waterspouts, all reaching for the sky and threatening to go through the netting. I had always understood that pruning is best done when the trees were dormant and so I dutifully cut away at all the rampant growth. Interestingly, all that growth miraculously reappeared in spring and by the end of summer I was again presented with the same vigorous vegetative growth.

Happily, my research led me to the wonders of summer pruning (which is actually done in mid to late autumn). You see, summer pruning actually calms down the trees, removing a lot of leaves that might otherwise fuel a spring explosion of vertical growth. In mature trees like mine, summer pruning gives you the opportunity to open up your trees to sun and light without startling it into bolting growth in the spring. If you do it right, you can stimulate the formation of fruit spurs in apples and pears. If you are very lucky, some of these new fruit buds will actually flower before the winter sets in. My “Calville blanc d’hiver” apple was sporting this lovely blossom this week in fact!

Dormant pruning is great for new trees, where you want to stimulate growth and help them acquire their mature shape. The harder you cut them, the greater the growth response. If you have mature trees like mine, a summer haircut while they still hold their leaves will keep them neat and tidy without a growth stampede in the spring.

“Calville blanc d’hiver”

Not all blueberries are blue. Among the two hundred blueberry bushes in the orchard, there are one or two notable plants. While all the plants are generally deciduous, turning a magnificent scarlet in the autumn, there is a single evergreen exception. Nearby this fellow is another unusual example that is, in fact, a black blueberry.

Your usual blueberry is a Vaccinium corymbosum, that is native to North America and comes in a wide variety of types such as Northern Highbush, grown in frost prone areas like the Central Highlands and the Southern Highbush grown in low chill areas like northern NSW.

Among the Vaccinium corymbosum of my orchard is a single example of Vaccinium fuscatum, the Black Highbush blueberry. The fruit of this blueberry is distinctly glossy black, lacking the familiar powdery bloom of the typical blueberry. In addition to its appearance, the Black Highbush blueberry has a unique flavour, not unlike blackcurrants, with hints of liquorice. Its now time to prune all the blueberries and with this, the opportunity to take hardwood cuttings of the Black Highbush blueberry for propagating new plants.

Fingers crossed that this unique example can be replicated to produce a crop of sweet and glossy black fruit in the years to come!

Black Highbush Blueberry