My very favorite garden chore is the spring pruning. Trapped inside all winter and when spring comes around I’m ready to get to work. Shaping the trees is a work of art. As they start flowering and the shape lets you know how well or how bad you did.
My absolute chore I hate is spraying in the summer. I’m wearing long sleeve, mask, goggles and a hat makes for a very hot time. It wouldn’t be so bad but covering 50+ trees takes so much time and sweat in the summer heat.
MOD
Spraying and fertilizing. I just spent all day up until 10:30pm fertilizing my plants and i didn’t even get to everyone.
Apparently i have a lot…
Best chore: Planting trees and grafting trees. To see a young tree flourish or a graft take off fills me with a sense of hopefulness and anticipation.
Worst chore: Pruning trees very high in tall trees
Enjoy pruning (when I have a good sense of what I’m trying to accomplish) is my favorite, I think, along with grafting.
Hate spraying.
My favorite is buying plants, opening the boxes. My least favorite is finding what to do with them because the idea I had when I bought them was dumb.
Seriously though I enjoy weeding and grafting, pruning, harvesting (and watching things ripen). Least favorite is picking off scale and fertilizing, hate fertilizing with a passion. Next year I’ll add spraying as my attempt at surround failed and got hit hard with pc again. Y’all were right about my honeymoon period, two years without spraying and getting pristine peaches is over.
LMAO. What a way start my morning. Just about spit out my coffe.
Fertilizing is also one thing I hate. Pulling back mulch adding fert. At my age bending over on these low canopy trees is hard. Nice to pick fruit but getting under there is a hard. Especially if you dont get to it and its full of blooms. I knock so many off.
MOD
Removing poplar roots is my never ending garden chore. If someone has a non chemical solution, please let me know. I’m probably out there for an hour everyday with my mattock pulling them up.
My favorite is planning. Finding out what varieties to buy, planning for the soil and site selection, designing trellises, buying grow bags, etc.
Worst… cutting down / removing apple trees that have been seriously mamed or killed by fire blight… after I gave them 4 or 5 years of my time and effort. I have done that 7 times.
I have 3 apples now… if they end up the same… there will be no more. Will replace them with something that works.
Best… harvesting lots of fruit, berries, greens, okra, squash, peppers, onions… Good suff for us to eat and share with other family members.
TNHunter
picking food in a timely manor.
Spraying
I will let you guess which one I like / hate
Spraying copper at bloom time helps with that. Fireblight is transferres by the pollinators. Although I dont seem to have this problem yet I did read about it. Apples are one of the few fruits that you can spray with copper at bloom. It is not a high dosage.
My very first trees were apples. Planted six of them. Bought them at big box store and bought my favorite varities. That was a big mistake. Got a few apples but it was a disaster. Removed all six and started another disaster with peaches.
With a bit of research and knowing why I failed led me to 4 highly disease resistant apple trees. Williams Pride, Liberty, Freedom and Sansa. Sansa is not highly resistant but wanted a Gala style apple tree. Some are still blooming and all have apples now. I dont get fireblight on pears so hopefully non on the apples.
Best: Pruning fruit trees.
Worst: Weeding.
No.
Favorite is harvesting/picking and what I hate the most is weeding
Copper is toxic to pollinators. Sure you can spray it during bloom but you’ll also be killing off your helpers by doing so
Copper is toxic to humans and animals also. Toxicity is based on the concentration. If you notice it is a smaller concentration. Not to say its totally safe.
My point being you can spray at bloom for apples. I have seen that it is non-toxic to bees in lower concentrations.
Still, no.
Hand watering pots and trees in the evening with a beer and an audiobook. And I get some weeding done while the hose is at each tree for a few minutes. Best chore, period.
There aren’t any yard chores I truly dislike, but winterizing / dewinterizing can be frustrating. Moving all my fig pots into and out of the garage every year is going to get old, I can tell.
Probably eating my harvest straight off the plant. I do enjoy weeding though, it’s very satisfying.
I absolutely despise mowing, it’s a big reason why I designed a huge garden. The less grass the better.
My favorite is checking on the progress of grafts and new plantings.
My least favorite is dealing with weeds and other stuff on the ground or in the way.
