Garden City Harvest - grow.feed.inspire

This weeks blogging duet. Self portraits.

This week we’ve got a dynamic duo of bloggers: Tracy and Jerra Lee. They’re both 17, and they are working hard on the MPG ranch this spring. They want to tell you about some the lessons they’ve learned about pruning – tis the season for it y’all.   So read up, you may learn a thing or two.    – Cori

Last week at MPG Ranch, we pruned the old orchard, located oddly enough by the Orchard house.  We pruned over thirty different trees, some apple, pear, cherry and apricot.  Each type of tree grows in a special way so the different kinds need to be pruned differently.

Fruit tree pruning: when pruning a fruit tree there are many shapes and styles to choose from and there are certain things to look for. The three main pruning structures are central leader, modified central leader, and open central.

• A central leader is the main vertical leader with branches coming off the trunk in a sort of Christmas tree shape.
• A modified central leader has a leader with lateral branches that kind of swirl around the tree.
• An open center is a tree that has a goblet shape, and there are a few main leaders all heading in different directions.

The trees at the MPG orchard are were mainly modified central leaders and open centers.

Jake and Courtney jamming and pruning. Photo by Tracy

The main thing we  removed were branches — cracked branches, broken branches, sickly branches, and those branches that grow south rather than north – they had to go.  Other branches that should be removed are water sprouts, and any branches that grow up from below the graft union. The water sprouts are the ones that grow straight up, and you would know the branches that grow from below the graft union because they grow up from the ground at the base of the tree. We also pruned double leaders or co-dominant stems, because they are competing for the leader position.  You want one dominant leader stem, especially with young trees.

What else to think about?  Good question!

Branches that are rubbing or overlapping — remove the less ideal branch or branches. One of the main goals of pruning is to allow foliage maximum access to sunlight. There’s also keeping tree height low enough so you can harvest the fruit, and maintaining overall tree health by removing the dead stuff.

As far as the experience, we thought it was fun, but our muscles were sore at the end of the day.  Doing this everyday would be tough work!

To read more about the MPG Youth Crew or MPG Ranch check out at the MPG website.

MPG Youth Crew. Photo by Courtney

I am pleased to introduce this weeks guest blogger and photographer, Courtney. . . She’s a member of the crew, and we found out today a master photographer!

From Courtney. . .

This weekend the MPG youth crew gathered up at the top house to work in the educational garden.  While working in the educational garden we spread top soil for the new seed orchard. Next we pulled bark off the raised beds and we had a bunch of fun finding the biggest and fattest of the pine bark larva. With all of us spreading out top soil and racing to see who could do the most beds, we completed that job in no time.

Tori and Courtney shoveling compost. Photo by Cori Ash

From the educational garden we headed over to the top house garden and the day got to be pretty crappy. Literally, we shoveled hundreds of  pounds of cow poop, spreading it around the vegetable garden and all the fruit trees. We learned that cow poop compost doesn’t really stink, but it sure is heavy!

After shoveling and spreading lots of manure we worked on pruning the orchard trees and figured

A machine. Photo by Courtney

out that pruning feels like a type of art.

Learning to prune. Photo by Cori Ash

We learned what kind of branch’s need to be cut away and how to cut with an angle.

It was a lot of fun this Saturday. We got work done and built our muscles along the way. It is a beautiful site — check it out!

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To read more about the MPG Youth Crew check out at the MPG website.

Jake fills his pack with Hounds Tongue. Photo by Tracy

At MPG Ranch teens put in their second day of work.  For a crew of adolescents hiking through draws thick with aspen, willow, and choke cherry pulling hounds tongue and clearing out old roots and rocks to prepare a garden bed, this is not the sort of job they ever imagined. This opportunity for some of the kids is their first job.  For others it is a chance to develop good work habits and ethic, and others still it is chance to get a hands on experience with conservation, research, biology, and land stewardship.  Anyway you look at it, its a win win. One of the kids said the other day after we had just hiked along a very steep side hill for quite sometime, “I fricking like this!” As we all know working hard and being useful feels good.

As part of the work the Youth Crew will be doing at MPG the kids have also agreed to do a bit of weekly blogging and photo taking.  Each week a new teen will take photos and select them for the blog and another teen will write a bit about our work.  This week our teen guest blogger is Jake he’ll give you a bit more info on what we worked on Saturday. Our guest photographer is Tracy.

A bit of green moss. Photo by Tracy.

This Saturday we started the day off by pulling out some more hounds tongue. Hounds tongue is an invasive weed that disrupts wildlife and their natural routines. It is spread and deposited by animals or people that brush against its many branches. The plant can produce up to two thousand burs in one summer. The problem with that is that it takes very little time for it to find root and start its nasty life all over again somewhere else. The burs are very uncomfortable and make animals that walk by them spend more time trying to get them off during the vital time they need to be feeding or mating. We packed out the seeds, but most importantly you need to try to keep it off all of the game trails so as to keep its population away from the animals.

Cleaning out the old Juniper bed. Photo by Cori Ash

We finished off the day by cleaning out a bed for this summer. The bed is planned to be a pollinator garden. We removed quite a few roots of juniper bushes and had a heck of a time getting the majority of them out. There were also tons of rocks but we cleared most of those out too. We have ultimately been very productive thus far and are planning on continuing.

To read more about the MPG Youth Crew check out at the MPG website.

If you would like more information about the Youth Farm and our goings-on, please check us out atwww.gardencityharvest.org and www.Youthhomes.com, and check out more blog posts!

MPG Youth Crew on their first day of ranch work. Photo by Cori Ash

Over the last three years, teens living  at the Tom Roy Youth Guidance Home have had the option of working right out their back door at the Youth Farm.  This year in addition to working at the Youth Farm, the teens have a new job opportunity, this time on a ranch.  MPG Ranch, located in Florence promotes conservation through restoration, research, education and information sharing. This spring, I am excited to say that MPG Ranch is also teaming up with the Youth Farm to provide jobs for teens.

The MPG Spring Youth Crew will be charged with helping to control weeds, pruning the old orchard, assisting in the construction of a mobile chicken unit, and anything else MPG ranch might find for us.

Ready to pull some Hounds Tongue, an invasive species that is both sticky and annoying. Photo by Cori Ash

One of the crew members offered to do a little writing for this blog as a part of her experience.  So I am happy to introduce Tori, this week’s guest blogger.  She’ll give you a little more of the flavor of what went on there on Saturday.

Today the Tom Roy Home went to the MPG ranch.  Our crew went to a couple of parts of the ranch and pulled a weed called Hounds Tongue.

Hounds Tongue is a plant with a tall stalk that has little balls of little thorns on it. We pulled the weed because it is an invasive species that gets stuck to animals fur and then they spend time trying to get it off instead of trying to find food for the winter.

Plus, it’s just annoying. When it gets stuck to you, it gets stuck to everything, it stays there until you or an animal picks it off.  Of course if you get it off where it can grow, then it plants itself right there makes more thorny seeds,  animals or humans walk by the seed head sticks to you and it starts all over again.  So with it being such an annoying weed we were glad to help get the seed heads out of the way of the wildlife.

If you would like more information about the Youth Farm and our goings-on, please check us out atwww.gardencityharvest.org and www.Youthhomes.com, and check out more blog posts!

A hard working crew from MCC. Photo by Cori Ash

Exciting news! In the 2013 growing season we have an extremely generous person helping to grow the Youth Farm.  The Youth Farm’s neighbor, Lewis Matelich, has agreed to allow us the opportunity to incorporate his land to our farm, expanding the Youth Farm from a 1+ acre farm to a 2+ acre farm.

The Youth Farm expansion will allow us to improve our field rotations incorporating long term cover cropping, expand onsite composting, as well as have the ability to grow more food flowers and berries with Youth Homes teens, in turn creating more job opportunities.  So I guess It really does pay to have good neighbors.

Our new field borders our east fence line and for last decade or so, has been used for grazing a few horses.  There were several runs and enclosures of old wood fencing, a bit of barbed wire, a small dilapidated cattle shoot, and a hand full of other wood and metal left over from the fields previous life.

Pulling posts. Photo by Cori Ash

Last Wednesday before the cold front set in we were lucky enough to have Montana Conservation Corps come out and lend a dozen pairs of hands.  These gals and guys equipped with helmets and other safety wear promptly set to dismantling the fences, cut down a few scraggly trees, pulled posts, rolled barbed wire, and hauled everything to Eko Compost.  They were such a great crew to help us get started with our project.

There are so many folks who have been involved in the success of the Youth Farm over the last three years.  All these fantastic and generous people have helped the Youth Farm grow from a small 10 family CSA to a still small, but highly productive farm that this season welcomed 40 CSA members, included a winter CSA, and grew over 25,000 lbs of food.  Of that 25,000 lbs of food that was grown exclusively by Youth Homes teens, 12,000 lbs of food was donated to 13 different Missoula family service agencies.

A proud young man. Photo by Cori Ash

With all that, we just wanted to say  Many Thanks From our Growing Youth Farm.  

If you would like more information about the Youth Farm and our goings-on, please check us out atwww.gardencityharvest.org and www.Youthhomes.com, and check out more blog posts!