How is it that birds don’t eat these grapes? they eat mine
Looked at the Gala apple tree, wondering what the yellow was.
It was an entire upper branch, with the leaves just turned yellow. Not brown. No spots or blotches as in disease, just yellow leaves, starting to fal
I’ve lost a number of apples and crabs the last few years - the leaves were all diseased-looking and turned brown. This is something else. On the possibility that it could be drought stress, I’m watering, but I already had, two weeks ago. No other trees appear stressed like this.
already 2 excelent responses.
I just want to add a little.
When hardneck garlic flowers. you get the flower stalk and flower “bud” at the end. You harvest these and these are called garlic scapes.
They are best when harvested before they start to curl. They get harder/woody when they start to curl.
You harvest them by just pulling on them. They are quite stretchy. Feels like pulling on a piece of rubber or giant elastic band.
You could also leave the flowers. This will cost you some bulb size though.
If you leave them, they will start to flower. But usually before the flowers open and definitely before seeds can form. Small bulbils start growing in the flower head. Those push out the flowers and continue to grow. These little bulbils can be grown out for 1-2 years into cloves. Which can be planted to harvest bulbs the next year after that. A lot of work. But some believe it’s a good way to filter out soil diseases. Since the flower is separated quite far from the bulb and possible diseases (mostly fungus)
If you take some fine tweezers and pull out the bulbils when their forming. You can actually have the garlic truly flower and set seed. And this way you can make new garlic varieties. Google true garlic seed. It’s quite some work. But because of that there is not much competition, and i think even an “armature” thus has a decent chance to develop something special.
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You obviously have rain
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Lots
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While I do not have an orchard, my representative, Sharon Wylie, was who tried to get housing authority to not force me to remove my garden and wrote a very nice letter (she sent me a text of it) but alas they ignored her. She saw the small garden I had and as a fellow gardener who travels the world she was very upset. When mom died, she drove me to the funeral home and back, she volunteered so I didn’t have to go by bus, and then is when she saw my garden.
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Are their community gardens where you might be able to obtain a garden space at least for annuals, or a friend who might loan you a space for a couple small fruit trees in return for some fruit?
This is why I live in a rural area. No limits
I’m sorry to hear about this. Hopefully they let you get to end of season at least
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Made black raspberry ice cream. Picked blueberries, which has turned into a soltice tradition. Also I grew a bunch of flowers this year so now there are vases of flowers all over the house.
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Almost time for sour cherry and black raspberry picking here!
This little Balaton looks to have more cherries than leaves!
Black raspberries close to turning
Row of Montmorency cherry
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beautiful fruits/ orchard!
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It’ll only take me 17 hrs to drive there. Totally worth it for peaches that size!
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This is heart breaking. SO is the garden gone now? Dealing with government bureaucracy and situations like this is one of the very few things I feel I am an expert at- only because I’ve worked for 7 municipal governments, 2 state governments, and 2 non profit agencies in my 34 year career and both my degrees are in public administration. THis is what I do. I really wish I could have joined you in this fight- I feel pretty strongly that we could have saved your garden if you were willing to do some work. You certainly don’t strike me as someone who would ever try to benefit from your hearing disability, but if you would have been willing to use that we could have gotten a lot of political mileage from it. But even forgetting that, in todays environment where its very appealing to have urban gardens, grow healthy food sourced from your own yard, recycle, and so on, I guarantee you that no high ranking political authority would want to be associated with a story about a man like you living in a housing authority property trying to grow his own garden was told it had to be destroyed. No way. One good media story- and I bet we could have gotten one- would have generated the public support and political will to save your garden. I honestly believe this happened because your story never made it to a real decision making official. You were the victim of low level bureaucrats who just looked at the rules, had no authority to change them or make exceptions, and therefore enforced them by telling you the garden had to go. If we could have reached a person high enough to say “ok, its against the rules but the merrits of this case make it worthy of an exception to the rules or a change to the rules” then I bet anything we could have gotten that exception or rule change. I mean, if you were a mid to high level official and a reporter put a microphone in your face and said “did you support the housing authority decision to make a man like David trying to grow a garden to help him get healthy, affordable food using his own labor and money and a little bit of what is now grass” would you want to say “yes, that was a good thing for us to do” or would you want to say “no, and I’m going to investigate this and find a way to let him have his small garden”?
Oh well. I’m sorry this happened to you.
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hahaha. That one literally made me laugh out loud! Jay, if you make the SEVENTEEN hour drive for a few peaches, I MIGHT even throw in a few plums! haha. Just don’t get greedy and expect blueberries or cherries…they only go to the people who drive EIGHTEEN hours or more. 
Should I leave the light on for you?
@growjimgrow That ice cream though!!! Homemade ice cream is incredible enough by itself, but I never even considered black raspberry ice cream. Its so beautiful and I can imagine how good it tastes!!! Nicely done.
@J.D Just when I was starting to feel my oats and pride of my orchard, you go and post those pics. WOW!!! Perfectly lined trees, perfectly trimmed, even the grass looks good. And the trees are loaded. Also, I’d love to see those raspberries when they all turn black…will be even more beautiful! Nice pics my friend.
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Kevin,
Come to New England, Black Raspberry ice cream is one of the top five most popular ice cream flavors here.
By the way, Jay and I live about an hour apart. We could rent a Uhaul and go together to “visit” you. If the truck was not full with your fruit, we would not leave your orchard. Not greedy or anything !!!ha,
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No, not greedy at all! Just doing our part to lighten the load.
@thecityman New England has the highest per capita ice cream consumption in the US. I think the “kiddie” size servings being the size of a small child might have something to do with it.
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Kev. its sad something like this happens in this country. no ones willing to stand up for what is right. instead they tow the line. im glad youre the type of politician that stands up to this kind of bueaucracy. its also disturbing that we even have to get it to media for it to get seen by the right politician so they give a crap enough to over ride the bueaucrats! the cites are infested with this crap. no one cares for their fellow man anymore. glad i live where i do. common sense still prevails. so sorry this happened to you Dave.
I got a sense of that when I lived near Ithaca for a few years. When the snow finally melted and the gray clouds broke, everyone went crazy for outdoor activities and lines formed at all of the (mostly seasonal) ice cream parlors and stands. I’ve never seen anywhere else that had so many of them.
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You are welcome to stop by on the way home. I treat you Chicago deep dish pizza😋
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