-
“Late” Summer Pruning
I try not to prune anything in the autumn and since it is still summer took the time to quickly clean up some branches. I’ll have to remember to do a quick prune in May/June to help ensure no energy is wasted on shoots that restrict airflow or head back to the main trunk.
-
Rampant Compost Growth
Compost is definitely the way to go. Look at this raised bed and random seeds. Dozens of tomato plants and squash/melons. Really interested to see what this one turns out to be.
-
Goji Trellis – Random Weekend Project
Spent the morning down at Beard Park and had a free afternoon. I’ve been feeling the need to do something constructive with my hands so since I had all the odds and ends needed it was time to build a trellis for the goji berry bush we planted this spring. Making this trellis was relatively easy as I had some 6 ft trim strips so the most complicated part was matching the appropriate drill bit for the screws so there is no splitting. After anchoring the trims together on one end I used some scrap 2×6 ends to curve the boards and then finished by cutting some horizontal strips that…
-
Blackberries! 1 a day….
The interesting thing about establishing berry bushes or beds is that you don’t want much fruit the first couple years so that the roots can establish themselves. However this means that when you do get a handful of berries they all ripen at different times. These blackberries are making us pick 1 a day so we can’t spoil our appetite. Unfortunately the deer are still having a field day with the thornless variety. If that keeps up we may just transplant some of these as the deer seem to not give them any attention.
-
Lunch with a View
Finally made our way to Brian’s Landing at Green Lakes today. It definitely is a place with a view. Elaine and I had a nice lunch and even enjoyed a summer shower from the cover portion of the patio. Will have to take the kids out on one of the clear bottom boats at Green Lakes soon.
-
Garden Planning – Conundrums
We succeeded in building the raised beds and the new to-be strawberry patch. The question is what to do with the extra space that has filled in nicely with clovers. I’m thinking 2020 will be focused on just maintaining the raised beds to hopefully have a successful garden. If all goes well then we’ll do some traditional rows. With the grape arbor in place for an entrance we’ll have to build out the fence to match, definitely.
-
A Glimpse of an Unfenced Orchard
Every other month the grass gets a little too crazy in the fencing so we need to go through the process of taking down the fencing. (untie, unstake, move) Mowing, cleaning the mulch (weeds) and trimming any suckers sprouting from the roots. The upside? I get a short glimpse of what it will look like when I no longer need all the fencing to ward off the deer… many many years from now.
-
Leveling the walk
A side effect of completing replacing the septic was that the path to the front steps got depressed. Caprice lent a hand so we could cheer it up by making it level again.
-
Red Rome Beauties and Crimson Crisp
This years apple bounty is exciting. It’s been 2 years since we originally planted our little orchard and having any apples at all on what started as whips is utterly fascinating. This year all 6 of the apple trees flowered but between the cold snaps and weather fluctuations only 2 of the trees formed fruit. This year I thinned the fruit early (reducing the number of growing fruit in half) not sure if it paid benefits or not but there hasn’t been any shattering like we saw last year. The Rome Red Beauty has a good dozen apples that look good enough to eat. They actually fully ripen in October…
-
Summer Compost Garden
While in the process of building the new raised beds, or laying them out as there isn’t any actual “building”, I needed to remove our pallet compost bin. What to do with all our great compost? Why move it into the new bed of course. The greatest part is that not even a week later we already had tomato and melon seedlings growing. Of course these little ones have quite a late start but with continual global warming who knows they may have time to produce. Don’t you just adore nature? Going to have fun watching these take off, Also raised beds are much easier to maintain you just pluck…
