Bees on the Almond blossoms

Just because I love the sound of the bees on the Almond tree and because the bees and the butterflies seemed to be having fun out there. Hope you can hear them humming away.

Harvesting Almonds

We've started picking the almonds and letting them dry. We have a basket in the back setting. I would love to get a count of how much we're getting but we have a tendency to eat them before we get a chance to weigh them. I'll see if we can actually get a count. =)

Oh Almond tree, oh almond tree doo doo doo dooo do do do

I walked out into the front yard yesterday so that I can water my corn and plants and I noticed that we seemed to have almonds opening up and getting ready for harvest. =) I look forward to picking(shaking) almonds and storing them, if not just plain eating them until I'm sick...

Almond tree

The other day I asked Jed to come out and look at the almond tree. I think he thought something was wrong. He asked me what he should be looking at and I made him look at a branch right in front of him. On it was a large almond. The pruning helped this winter and I made some interesting notes.

We appear to have a large amount of almonds growing on the tree, but a significantly greater number on the south side than the north side. This can be for a couple of reasons 1) I did heavier pruning on the south side. 2) Sun hit the south side more than the north and hence they came out earlier and the bees were able to pollinate. or 3) When the warm spell was broken by 30+ mile an hour winds and heavy rain most of that rain and wind came from the north-west meaning that a lot of those flowers fell and could not be pollinated.

We should still be able to get a good harvest from our tree, but I hope to keep notes so that I can learn from my actions.