Hello We have a over an acre of land just out of Ottawa. Looking after the yard and its flower gardens and trees has become a favourite pastime. While I am a rank amateur, I am slowly learning to develop low maintenace approaches so I can do things when and how I want, rather than because I have to. My major challenge now is dealing with the fifteen beautiful apple trees in the yard (this used to be the orchard of a neighbouring farm) I have cut a number down already so am now at the minimum to maintain the character of the property. With their overgrown size they are more sculpted than pruned - that's just fine, but they produce tons of apples - far beyong anything we can use. This leaves us two big problems: One is how to pick all the apples on the ground from late July through to the snow, without breaking our backs - does anybody know of an implement to make picking up apples easier and less time consuming? Two is to find an efficient means to compost the result to feed our gardens, rather than throwing wheelbarrows full of apples into the ditch. Got lots of good advice on composting - leaning towards building a 3 high rectangular wood frame compost container on a slope, 6-8 feet deep and maybe 15-20 feet wide to hold a year or two's supply and just leave it alone other than an annual turn. BUT, while there will be some grass clippings available in the summer and leaves etc. in the fall this would largely be a BIG PILE of APPLES. Does that create any special problems in composting that I need to deal with or can I just go for it?
Howdy Warren, Lee Valley Tools sells a small tool for picking up fallen apples and pears. I try to pick my apples before they fall and juice them since I have more than I can eat or cook. I put the juice into plastic bottles and freeze them. That way I have apple juice year round. The Berry Farm in Ontario sells the old fashion apple press. Please google search for address. An easier way is to tell friends they can have all the apples they want as long as they pick them. This technique works for me with apples, strawberries, plums and pears although it did not work with black currants. Peace Thean
The apples should compost down fine, even unmixed with other material. It may not be as pretty as in a mixed pile, but eventually it all breaks down. Fruitfall is usually just before leaf fall in any case so you should be able to add leaves soon after the big apple layer. I am wondering about attracting rats and other critters, from coyotes to bears... depends on what you have locally. If that's the case, you might want to consider burying them, though I'm not sure that helps; might just make the smorgasbord messier. For that reason alone I think I too would be looking for a way to avoid composting them - a bulk sale to a local juice maker or restaurant, farmer's market, having a U-Pick (or U-pick-up) day, etc. Edit: this is a long shot, but what about running over them with a mower, and mashing them to rot in place, or easier to rake up? That would speed things up, though it might be slippery for a while. For pick-up, I imagine an orchardist supplier would have something of a scale that would work.
Thean's got a point with the Lee Valley tool, but you can also use a regular old hayfork to pick apples easily out of your garden. You can absolutely compost apples whole, or throw them through the mulcher first to make the breakdown faster in the heap. Or, you can pick up as many as you can, press them for cider, and then use the must (the squooshened stuff) in your compost. The benefit of the must is that you can fold that stuff directly into your garden soils to decompose in situ, rather than having whole apples taking up a lot of room in your compost bin. If you're worried about attracting wildlife to your compost pile, and the apples haven't fermented, you can probably sell or donate the windfall fruit to a local stable - the horses will love you for life. Talk to the Mounties, too - they maintain stables in the Ottawa area, if my brain hasn't turned to moosh in the tropical heat. I had a single tree that used to give me 300 + pounds of apples, and I got inventive about giving them away....
Hi Warren in Ottawa I had two apple trees but I never sprayed these and so all the wormy apples had to go to my open air compost. I used to sprinkle some soil on top or maple leaves and had never any problem with the animals messing in the compost. I used regular racks to collect these but the Lee Valley rack will probably be easy way.
