Gardens at Coppertop

A month ago, like a blanket of soft snow, the petals fell from all the orchard blossoms. That can feel like a sad time of loss of beauty, yet in order for fruit to form, we must bid farewell to the flowers. Two weeks ago, I took photos of the baby fruit. After these thin themselves in “June drop,” a natural crop reduction phenomenon, we’ll go over each tree and pinch or snip off fruit to space the remaining best apples, pears, and plums six inches apart. You can see in the photos which fruit is dominant and the most likely to be harvested late in the summer.