In Kent, at Keepers Nursery, Karim Habbib reports, "The dormant season has come to an end, more or less.... This is very transitional time of the year in the nursery."
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| Waking |
In the Manchester (UK) area, Darren Turpin is showing us how to graft.
Closer to home, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association will hold its scion exchange on March 30 in the town of Unity.
Apples have their own seasons. It's spring, more or less.
It seems wrong to call autumn icons like McIntosh and Macoun "summer apples" just because they ripen before the start of astronomical fall on September 22.
Meteorological fall, which begins on September 1, captures the start of the season better. Its end on November 30, though, lags the end of the harvest.
Pomological autumn
These dates move around a bit on the calendar (first Monday, fourth Thursday), suggesting the tentative, flexible character of the season, the "more or lessness" of it.
The division between summer and fall apples is the significant one.
I've reclassified the apples in my catalog accordingly. (Including McIntosh.)
Yet by plotting the start of fall, we have also defined the end of summer.
The end of autumn is the start of winter.
What of the other pomological seasons?
Beyond fall and winter
But we are clearly in it today, as the trees wake and orchardists graft budwood to rootstock.
Indeed the spring solstice, around March 21, seems to capture the transition.
That makes pomological winter an extra long season, more than 16 weeks compared to autumn's 12. (A perfect quarter of the year would be 13 weeks.)
At least in these parts, winter is long.
When does apple spring end? When is apple summer?
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