A promise yet to be fulfilled [07/24]

I’m Nathan Langley and this is A promise yet to be fulfilled, a seasonal weekly newsletter on my garden developments at home in Sudbury, Ontario!

The bugs, the bugs! You should see the size of the bugs!

Basic maintenance was the focus yet again this past week. The grass continues to grow inches immediately after being cut, and the weeds are plentiful throughout the existing gardens at home.

One stroke of luck, if you can call it that, was banging my head on the crab apple tree again while I was mowing. The tree has been in bad shape since a black bear damaged half of its canopy a few years ago in the fall. Since the sun was shining, I took the opportunity to do some work on it!

I didn’t do any pruning to increase apple production, as I don’t generally eat crab apples. Instead, I focused on removing all the dead / damaged wood, stress shoots, crossing branches (or branches growing back towards the centre of the tree), and those pesky lower branches I keep hitting my head on.

I ended up removing slightly more than 1/3 of the live wood on the tree, which isn’t recommended as it can stress the tree out too much (particularly when it is as old as this tree is). I’ll just keep an eye on it throughout summer and remove any new stress shoots that pop up so that it spends its energy growing in a “fruitful” direction (sorry! 🤭).

It still looks a little lopsided, since half of its canopy was damaged, but its shape has drastically improved. Hopefully, it will be back to its glorious old self in a few years!

n

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