Summer harvest begins

Summer Harvest 2016 - 5Although students may be away enjoying their vacation time, much important work continues during the summer months in the School’s Burpee Garden, Orchard and Vineyard.

Recent harvests from the Garden include the very first tomatoes of the season, beets, carrots and kale. The tops of onions, which students planted last March, are just starting to fall over and that means it will soon be time to harvest them.

Summer Harvest 2016 - 2While there will not be a major harvest from the Orchard this year, there have been some very tasty samples of things to come (apples, pears and several varieties of plums). Peach and apricot blossoms, unfortunately, did not survive the frost.

Last spring, students thinned out most of the fruit in order to give the young trees a chance to put all of their growth energy into the roots and not the fruit. The same is true in our table grape Vineyard. Casey and Joan Jones, along with student Eli Smyth (who is helping out over the summer – thank you, Eli!), have been trimming 200+ grapevines in order to help them develop stronger roots.

The Orme School is featured in the Summer 2016 issue of Edible Phoenix, where you can read more about our Farm-to-Table Program.

Yes, summer may be here, but our Garden, Orchard and Vineyard are working overtime; getting bigger and better with each passing day!

Summer Harvest 2016 - 3Summer Harvest 2016 - 1

5 comments on “Summer harvest begins

Leave a Reply to Emerson 'Casey' Jones Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *