Winter Damage, Spring 2022
Mid-May, and my 29 year old Desert King Fig is still not leafed out. Usually by this time, it has leaves and is beginning to push new growth. This old fig sits against our sunroom, and has never had significant winter damage before, even though I live where we get significant Fraser outflow winds. But […]
Propagating and Growing Fruit Trees for the CMFC Nursery
Many of our customers know the nursery at Cloud Mountain Farm Center for our fruit trees. Because 2020 shut down our workshop series, we did not have the opportunity to offer our classes on fruit tree grafting and summer chip bud grafting. We did spend some time videoing our crew during chip bud season, and […]
Codling Moth & Apple Maggot Alert 2020
Hopefully many of you have played with the codling moth tracking tool we have posted about in the past, and are tracking a weather station near you, in hopes of controlling codling moth and apple maggot this summer. Watching the weather has been tricky this year, with temperatures fluctuating between warm and cool. As we […]
Your Home Orchard in the Crazy 2020 Spring.
In so many ways, 2020 has been a crazy wild ride for everyone. In addition to the world wide pandemic throwing us into chaos, Mother Nature and the weather are also keeping the home orchardist on their toes! A mild February was followed by a March that had both unseasonably warm and unseasonably cold weather, […]
Eager for Spring
The last few weeks have thrown the weather at us, hasn’t it? Cold, snow, then wet, wet, wet. But once in a while the sun peaks out and reminds us that spring is just around the corner. We took advantage of a little of that sunshine to walk around the farm- here are some updates. […]
How We Produce Fruit Trees
Cloud Mountain Farm Center is ramping up for a new nursery season! And February through early April is the best time for planting bare root fruit trees. Fruit trees are produced by grafting variety wood to rootstocks, then field growing the resulting trees until they are big enough to transplant. Few people realize this process […]