Orchard update

Another year has passed as has another successful pruning season.  Meanwhile I have learned a great deal from an apple management seminar I took in at the State Fair last fall.   One is that I picked the right two trees for my "mini-orchard" - the Honeycrisp and the Zestar.  Another is that the growth characteristics of these trees is quite different, in ways which made complete sense to me, having observed these trees for the past several years. Turns out could have pruned the Zestar back very hard last year and it would have been fine.   I also learned why the Honeycrisp did not bear last year--it had not been properly thinned the year before.  Honeycrisp is very sensitive to density of fruit, and it needs very active thinning or else it will only bear every other year.   So now I both trees back to the size I want them to be, and there structure is pretty good too.  The two key management activities will be aggressive thinning (especially on the Honeycrisp) and the application of fruit tree spray if I want cleaner more useable fruit.  After a year or two of fairly clean fruit with no spraying, each year we have had lots of blemished fruit, most of which is not useable.