June 18th Meeting: Derry Walsh on Fruit Trees and Mason Bees

Last night's meeting saw Derry field an array of questions on both topics. For those who missed her presentation, her website at www.derrysorchardandnursery.ca has lots of information, including how to contact her if you have further questions or want to buy an apple tree of your own.

Highlights of her talk included:

• Most Vancouver nurseries selling apple trees are selling plants left over from orchards in the Okanagan. These are not good varieties for our coastal conditions.  Two that are good choices for Vancouver are the Dutch varieties 'Belle de Boskoop' and 'Goudrenet'.
• It's not a good idea to buy a plant grafted with several different varieties of apple. Within a few years all but the strongest variety will have died or become weak and unproductive.
• In a small space, espaliers or cordons are good methods of training trees on dwarf rootstock.
• Apple trees need one or sometimes two other trees that bloom at the same time as pollenizers. These don't have to be in your own yard, but can be anywhere within a block of you. Crabapples are excellent pollenizers. For an ornamental one with no fruit, Derry recommends 'Snowdrift'. For good fruit, she prefers 'Dolgo'. Bees prefer white-flowered varieties over all others.
  
• Mason bees prefer wooden bee boxes or Kraft paper straws in a container over the commercial plastic boxes.
• Mason bees lay female cells at the back of the nesting tube, male offspring at the front (because the males are expendable if any damage occurs)
• If you see the rear end of a bee when you look into a nesting tube, it's a male; if you see the face of the bee, it's a female.