RCCF Orchard 2025 Update
- Oct 1
- 2 min read
10/02/2025
We have completed a whole year in the orchard now since RCMG took over management of the orchard at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility (RCCF) last summer. We had some big plans and followed through on a lot of them. But we still are on a steep learning curve. Here are some of the things we have learned.
Pruning Best Practices
In February, we had an extension trainer come in to help a group learn how to prune the trees in the orchard for health and production. We did a second work day to get the entire orchard pruned. We plan to repeat that pruning experience again next year.
Routine Maintenance is Good
For the growing season, we set monthly work days the third Saturday of the month from 10 AM to noon. With over 60 different individual volunteers, many of which came multiple times, we had great volunteer participation and made some improvements every month. For next year, we plan to focus a few extra days of mulching early in the season to help keep down weeds later in the season.
Harvest News
In July we were able to harvest 125 pounds of sour cherries and learned some things about the length of the harvest time for this fruit crop.
We had less than a dozen plums on our plum trees. I’m not sure what went wrong but possibly a late frost during spring flowering. We are hoping for a better crop next year.
Then came the apples and pears. With the help of volunteers we were able to harvest and donate over 300 pounds of apples. We didn’t see any disease pressure on the apples but about half the pears are unsightly with scab. Many of the apples were significantly damaged by pests. This meant while a dedicated person could cut around insects and damage, the apples weren’t always of a quality that could be donated. We sorted through all the apples harvested, donated the good ones, and tried to make sure apples that could be used were passed along to volunteers and neighbors.
We donated fruit to:
Keystone Food Shelf
Every Meal in Roseville
Gardens for Good
The Children’s Peace Garden in Hamline-Midway
Plans for Next Year/2026
Based on pest identification, traps, and some research, we figured out what some of the insects we are dealing with. We have IPM plans this fall and next spring to helpfully reduce the amount of pest-damaged apples next year. This includes removing some lower branches, keeping weeds from making a pathway from the ground into the trees, and removing all the windfalls from the orchard.
Our most recent work day (September) we put protection around the trunks for the winter and staked/supported some of the trees that are leaning after a wet and windy summer. (All our trees are on dwarf rootstock so don’t have large or strong root systems).
We had some really beautiful days working in the orchard this year. We hope you will consider joining us next year!
