I looked out the window at a raging March blizzard today. Minus 7 or 8 F. degrees in a the forecast in a couple days, so I hope things are solidly dormant yet in my orchard that I haven’t driven to since October.
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This weekend I made my graft attempts on my apple and pear trees.
I potted two goumi seeds that sprouted in the crisper drawer.
Planted a plum tree seedling from last year’s air prune bed.
Prepped the bed for onions and started hardening off the onion plants.
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it should be hitting me tomorrow, though ive been told it will just be a thundestorm and will be in the 50s!
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I’ve been renovating strawberry beds, which means digging them all up, adding more compost, and replanting them, with a few blueberry bushes in the middle. I am pulling out some of the berry plants. Just gave about 80 more to the back door neighbor when he came over to pick up one of his chickens that flew into my yard and was eating cat food on the porch.
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Well… I planted SOME seeds here n there and sprinkled some breadseed poppies around before this happened xD
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50 and raining hard right now. seeing more brown showing up now.
Does that mean the white is gradually melting?
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yup. going quick now.
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Weeding after work. My yard was a sheet of ice 3 weeks ago. How are there so many weeds already!?!!?
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Apparently, it’ll be in the 60’s around here on friday, I’m READY! xD
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finished filling the last of the raised beds. Also filled two large pots for some dahlia. Now i just need to do my window box, and 100 pots for figs (though only a small amount of the mix will be compost and soil, about 2 shovel fulls out of 2 gallons, rest will be peat, pearlite, and woodchips)
For the final bed today I layered sand in between each wheelbarrow load, the result is some really nice light mix which I planted my beets in today. in a couple of weeks i will plant radishes. In the heat of the summer i’ll do some short, warm weather greens, then in the end of the season i’ll do some cold season beets and fall carrots in it.
I also planted an interesting crop, strawberry blite! its one im super excited for a lot of reasons. 1) its native here, 2) it can be used for dye, which my sister and wife use for dying fabrics 3) its a reseeding green that can take the heat of summer 4) it has “Berries” that are allegedly quite sweet and nice, not true berry sweet but quite sweet for a veggie.
The guys that gave me soil and compost definately gave me WAY too much. i still have about 2 yards left for all these tasks and I really only need 1 for the rest of the pots. I’ll use the rest of it i think to level out some spots and fill in an area the previous owner put gravel in. Guess its finally time to remove that gravel.
I pruned pears (Keiffer, Warren, Magness) and chestnuts (Qing). That includes cutting a large rootstock pear tree at ~3 1/2’ in preparation for future top work. Evidently the (purchased) rootstock had grown but the graft had not. It took me years to figure out the problem, i.e. why the big tree bore tons of flowers but no little fruit. Having diagnosed the problem after many years, I’m now planning bark grafts of both the originally intended variety (Harrow Delight) and a new variety (Potomac).
It was cold (~35 F) today but sunny and calm, so with proper clothing it was actually pleasant.
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Got ready for the apple and pear grafting - starts tomorrow. Forecast for the week showing lots of good temps. lots of pears at green cluster. Most apples not so far along but they’re getting there…
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Yesterday I weeded and put down new mulch on my larger strawberry bed. It is ready for the season now.
Today… I have a bed prepped for my new Evie2 strawberries. Will get them planted and mulched.. and will plant a few of them here and there in my food forest bed. I got 25 plants.
I recieved another package of bocking 14 comfrey (from a trade).. will get those planted today.
I checked out my Jplums and Pears yesterday… the Pears looked better after our 29F frost than plums did… several hundred tiny jplum fruits were showing black and dull… where they were green and shiny.
My graft of Alderman and my AU Producer have a few blossom clusters that had not opened yet.. hopefully they bloom more after the frost.
My EU Plum (Mt Royal, Green Gage) have not bloomed yet… Still have hope for plums there.
My Lapins cherry had about a dozen blossoms open when it frosted.. they are toast.. but there are hundreds more yet to bloom.
Goumies look to be quite frost hardy.. I see very little damage on them even though they were in full bloom when the 29F hit.
TNHunter
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went and moved a few planters that were blocking the iris from coming up, looked at the crocuses because the snow melted, got cold, came back inside. i did more in the greenhouse though
and i organized the potting tables a bit
I planted some saffron bulbs in the fall. They made a few flowers then a couple weeks after I planted them.
After all the snow melted I was surprised to find them doing really well a few weeks ago (after it what it feels like a month n a half covered with snow). Here’s how they look like now (first the rows be4 the garlic in back)…
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i can’t get any saffron to pop here. I’ve tried twice now. i just have big purple crocus with no spice