Well its the first warm day up here on long island. I planted out my sunchokes, leeks, and potato chits. I will likely get frosts until the first week of april so nothing frost tender yet.
Also spent a lot of time shvoeling dirt into mtly new raised beds. Last fall i filled them with woodchips and this year we added some chicken wire or hardware cloth (we ran out of hardware cloth straps) some bamboo sticks, burlap, and twine to raise the beds even higher. I do think you could get away witj this for super cheap raised beds if you were inclined. Our plan is to use them until the woodchips break dow. And the soil sinks below the edge of the metal raised beds. Its a multi day peocess for us since we have full time jobs to move all this soil
To make sure it can handle the strength of all the spoil we tied jute string across the horizontal parts to brace it against bowing out. I figure its sort of like a giant grow bag.
Its rained twice since we started and no noticible soil loss through the burlap so seems to work
Also did some raised bed moving and dirt moving. We are moving our beds from the backyard to the front. A tease of warm weather made it really nice to get outside! I still need to till up the front yard, as we are doing a meadow project to attract pollinators. Within the next few weeks I should be able to get outside and finish yard cleanup!
I put out a little urea around my blueberry bushes. It rained last night so it should move down into the soil. I also mowed between my fruit tree rows.
Yesterday… I finished up the last of the cleanup from our ice storm.
A large sugar maple in the front yard had several long limbs to break… some low in the tree, some middle, some near the top (50 ft).
I had already cleaned up the mess of broken limbs that reached the ground… but all those that remained up in the tree had to be removed.
I used my 8 ft step ladder to get up to the lower limbs.. and climbed the tree with my smaller chainsaw taking out the broken limb mess. One limb broke in the very top… at least 40 ft high.. I climbed up.. and took it off with a hand saw.
Hauled all that broken limb mess down into the woods.
Getting trees in order. Picked up 2 persimmons, 2 figs, ordered 3 crabs. I will be picking up mulberry, apricots and Japanese plums tomorrow. I got yard surveyed for underground wires. Pretty mucky out there. Lots of rain yesterday, all day and night. I will be up-potting figs in a few weeks from nursery to big containers.
Finally got round to pruning the apple trees this weekend, probably should have done it a month ago but the weather kept putting me off. Also moved some raspberry canes that were taking over a path. Always feels good getting ahead of things before everything starts growing properly.
I cut some more trees on the hill on the south side of my house. I have about 100 pear trees to plant as soon as I get the trees cut into firewood and the limbs burned.
@weatherandtrees same here, ground completely covered and frozen. Planned on dormant spray and pruning but can’t get a few dry days in a row to do it yet…
I try to rationalize it and keep telling myself that the delayed spring up here is a benefit. I see some of these growers well to our SW getting a week of 70s and 80s and have their stone fruit and pawpaws blossoming too early with well below freezing temps in the forecast.
But I do think I’ll get out there today (I can walk on the snow now) and cut/salvage some of my apple and pear scion).
Eating your words around seattle. The plums and cherries went off big time over the last week. The peaches were starting to popcorn the last 2 days. Today I am just sad and pouting.
