Winter has returned, but it is not totally unwelcome. I could do without the 45mph winds but when the last spring frost is still 10 weeks away the warming trend was worrying. I am finding that because I am interested in growing fruit I have now an opposite view of the arrival of spring than my family and friends. It can’t come soon enough for them, whereas I can wait till the time is appropriate.
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It does look awfully cold though…
Cold is a relative term, it is a balmy -13C , the wind is what makes it look frigid. These temps. don’t last long during the day. With the increase in daylight hours, and the sun strength, it soon warms up.
In my experience even though we are in zone 2 we have the added bonus of not warming up early. A few more southerly zone 2 and 3 areas up here cannot fruit some of the varieties we can simply because of chinook winds which cause premature blossoms. Far better to stay dormant till the end than bloom early.
I really like that picture. I didn’t even notice the cows at first. I bet they cant wait to get in the barn on a day like that.
I didn’t notice the cows either. They can handle that cold as long as you feed them. I hate seeing hungry cows in cold weather.
So, hope I’m not being too nosy, but do you have a house there, or are you planning on building a home there?
I noticed that there are some thick stands of trees in the background. I bet in the spring/summer you are really hemmed in by forest.
Nice looking trees, BTW. I bet planting them gave you a nice workout, looking at that soil.
OK, just finished planting stuff in Mom’s backyard. If everything does well, she’s gonna have lots of flowers and other things come this and the following years.
Here’s what I planted:
Flowers:
35 Gladious
25 Freesias
13 Mirabilis (4 o’clock’s)
8 Cannas
3 Calla Lillies
Plus, a Cheyenne pecan and a Heritage raspberry. Sure glad I’m done with all that!
I noticed while planting the canna tubers, is that they seemed to look like ginger root. So, I just read that they are plants from the Ginger family, so that’s kinda interesting.
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Yeah. I’d like to have a cabin up there someday.
For now, just a camper trailer.
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They have a barn, they are beef cows and shelter from the winds is important, as is lots of feed. The bail feeders are never empty in the winter, the cows are not rationed and get to eat as much as they wish, when they wish. It will soon be calving time and they need to be in good shape.
A few brave souls like to come out in all types of weather to feed.
A person who is used to a scene usually does not notice certain things, as I look at this picture I am happy to see the mounds of well rotted manure, I foresee lots of wheelbarrows of work in my future, and many happy fruit trees.
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Having a cabin is really nice. I wish I was as good at incorporating fruit growing with mine as you have done.
I have no sun where my cabin is, I’m growing a few things though. I am looking at even ornamental plants, as I have all the possible edibles that works in the shade.
Here it is in the winter of 2014
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Pawpaws all in a row. I have 3 pawpaws from Chills that were seeds from Peterson trees, and Brady sent me 3 from Bill Merrill’s backyard in Fremont,CA
Johnnyapples offered me more, I passed, but want to say yes really bad! Nothing to look at! Mini-whips! Now to wait till I’m 70 years old, and I may taste one!
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I did get my degrees at the U of Iowa, B.S. in Engineering and a Ph.D. I have a Ph.D. in environmental engineering. The essence of my job now is that I manage the day-to-day operations in a research lab. I take care of instruments, train students, and do research. Our lab looks at the basic mechanisms of how metals cycle in the environment or how metals impact cycling of other elements like the nutrients. The best way to explain what we do is that is we look really closely at the how and why, but I cannot tell you off hand at what rate to apply N or P to your soil based on the crop etc.
You are right, the P is likely to stay put in the soil because of its nature, and interactions with soil particles. Mostly P is lost due to soil erosion, and some is removed with the crop. Since P is higher in the one plot than the surrounding spots, I would assume the past amending has increased the P.
I’m not sure on the zinc. I know literally nothing about animal husbandry, but I do know there has been some concern about the high amounts of metals supplementation (particulary Cu) in swine waste from the environmental side of things – copper can help trigger bacteria into becoming antibiotic resistant. Maybe is is common to feed horses Zn and other metal supplements with feed? Sometimes high metals also signal a change in the material the soil formed from. A soil formed from shale will have a different composition (could definitely have more metals) than one formed from river sand or limestone.
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Drew,
Maybe try a few under your light setup.KSU say they get three feet a year sometimes. Brady
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I’m going to baby them this year for sure, three feet is decent growth! I don’t mind waiting anyway, I just like growing things! Thanks for these!
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Love the doggie!
Drew,
Deeper pots or in-ground planting would allow those guys to drop their taproots more readily.
Careful if you transplant; the roots are insanely fragile.
Not too much sunlight the first 2 years or you might fry them.
Good luck. You only need one winner. They form clonal rhizome patches. One patch - or even a single tree - can be multi-budded to ensure cross-pollination.
They grow so slowly… *yawn.
Thanks for the tips, the pots are bigger than they look, the shadows, angle, and the board (which is rising to the right, on the landscape bricks) make them look short. The root pouch in front of them is 20 gallons. The roots are small on all of them. They are quite young. I worry about over watering in too large a pot. Those pots are 4 and 5 gallons. I will transplant them to larger pots in the fall, once they recover from the mailing and transplanting to these pots.
When I do transplant I won’t disturb the root ball. Maybe put in root pouches.
I will shade them too, I might keep them in containers for a bit, they will eventually go in ground at my cottage. Prepping the area is going to be a pain as I need to put a new roof on the cottage, and one bedroom needs a subfloor, and floor. Well 3 bedrooms need new floors. I’m going to have no time this spring and summer, I’ll be doing these repairs, alone too! From the photo you can see the roof is easy, the worst is getting them on the roof. I have to pay for transportation across the river for a truck, and back, that’s about $250.00 I don’t have. So most likely I’ll use my van as I can get it across for $40.00. No conveyor belt, so great my knees are going and I’m going to carry all that up a ladder? Yeah probably!
That’s an acrylic stain on my cottage, it’s 5 years old and needs to be done. Great color! Soap and water clean up. Not sure when I’ll have time to remove a few hundred phragmite rhizomes? Which need to be removed for me to plant these trees. If you never heard of them, they are invasive, and our worst invasive plant problem in our wetlands. Cat tails will become extinct here, unable to complete with these. I have not seen a cat tail on the island in 5 years. Matt, are you sure you want a cottage?
Mine is 52 years old, so your kids will have to do this stuff! if you built one! It’s starting to fall apart, is falling apart!
Back to Pawpaws, a couple trees found in Michigan were planted on the island, so I want to grab seed from them too. Big oblong fruits, good too! The only pawpaws I ever had.