- Strawberries – Homegrown. Starting approximately June 8th and the crop lasts about 3 weeks.
- Southern Peaches – Starting around the 3rd week of June.
- Sweet Cherries – Starting around the 1st week of July.
- Honeyrock Melons – Best Taste around and they begin arriving about the beginning of July.
- Blueberries – Starting in mid-July. Michigan’s Best.
- Sour Cherries – By order only! Pitted with no sugar and packed in 10# and 30# tubs.
Pick up dates are in July. - Tomatoes – Our own Vine-Ripe Tomatoes available the end of July.
- Sweet Corn – Available from mid-July until Frost.
- Green Beans – Locally grown. Available the end of July.
- Stanley Plums – Starting the 1st week of September (Labor Day).
- Bartlett Pears – Starting the 1st week of September (Labor Day).
Some
quick facts about Bauman Orchards from our orchard manager, Bill Bauman:
Bauman
Orchards consists of 117 acres in Rittman, Ohio. We have approximately
20,000 apple trees, 3,000 peaches, and a variety of other fruits and vegetables.
All
of our new plantings are dwarf and semi-dwarf trees. Better fruit
quality, easier spraying, easier harvest are some of the advantages of
dwarf trees. However, some of the disadvantages are they are more susceptible
to disease, and need to be staked or trellised.
We
use drip irrigation at our orchard. It seems to help keep our trees
healthier and gives us better fruit quality.
We
have about 25 different varieties of apples, including Red and Yellow
Delicious, Jonagold, Mutsu, Fuji, and Gala.
We
have at least 15 varieties of peaches, including white peaches and
our most popular, Red Haven. We start picking in July and pick them tree-ripe
for our market for better flavor.
At
Bauman Orchards, we also have plums. Stanley, Methley, Shiro, and
Santa Rosa are some favorite varieties.
In
June, we begin our strawberry season. Customers can buy them at our
market or pick their own.
Vegetables
are grown at Bauman Orchards: sweet corn, tomatoes, and peppers, which
are picked daily for our market.
In
the winter, we are busy pruning trees. We start in December and finish
around the first of May. This is probably the biggest job in the orchard.
We prune every tree, every year.
In
the spring, we finish pruning, clean up the brush, plant new trees
and vegetables, and start our spray program. It is also the time we
rent bees for pollination–without the bees pollinating the flowers
there would be no fruit.
In
the summer we begin our harvesting. We start with strawberries, then
peaches and summer apples such as Lodi and Transparent.
In
the fall we have 10 - 12 pickers to help bring in the rest of our apple
crop. Some experienced pickers can pick up to 300 bushels a day. We
pick apples in 18-bushel wooden bins.
You pick up a wagon at the front of the main store to put your apples and/or kids in. Then you can go through their hay maze, slide and pet a few of their animals inside their giant shed.
Didn't take too much to get these kids out in the orchard to pick a few manzanas.
Wanna bite??
These rows went as far as your eye could see. Loose a kid in this place and it could really be awhile before you find each other.
Kyleigh and the apple-still going strong.
Cool hideout place for kids
More arrows. Maybe they're in some kind of fortress and he's defending all the little ones inside. I have no idea. Wish I knew.
Without a doubt, come summertime, these kids won't be hesitating in the slightest when I ask them if they'd like to visit the apple orchard again. And Trent wouldn't mind either....he rather enjoyed the Brown Bag Apple pie we had later that week. For Kyleigh-brown bag apple pie or not, apple orchard was a new adventure that she probably wouldn't mind repeating.
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