New Douglas Township Has an Orchard

Thanks to Duane's shopping expertise, the New Douglas Township Garden has the beginnings of an orchard east of the white storage building at the old New Douglas Elementary School playground.

We now have planted as of May 13th, 4 Elberta peaches, 2 Liberty apples, a MacIntosh, A Pink Lady, and a Granny Smith apple trees - all happily in the ground. In the fall and winter the current apple trees east of the new orchard site will be pruned and fertilized to help bring them back into production. It is going to take a couple years before we have fruit to share with the township; but next years plan includes a raised bed strawberry patch, both red and black raspberrries, blackberries, manchurian apricots, and nanking cherries and possibly some rhubarb if we have any donated by township residents as this is a quite expensive fruit crown to purchase.

The small fruit garden will produce in less than 3 years and we are thinking about adding 10 - 15 blueberries east of the current orchard site and another 8 - 10 apple trees of different varieties: hopefully Red Delicious, Fugi, and more MacIntosh and another Granny Smith.

Think good thoughts about our new orchard on the site of the historic pear orchard where the school site now sits. This pear orchard produced, in the past, most of the fresh pears that were sold and consumed in St. Louis and surrounding areas.