Typical trip out to the garden with my camera and while walking past a large patch of ground cover I was forced to stop by the number of ladybugs everywhere!
I counted 20+ in this picture and thats just on the tops of the leaves. I can only imagine how many were in this 3′ patch.
I took a specimen of the troubled apple leaves to the nursery for a diagnosis. The pink lady was hit the hardest with minimal damage to the granny smith and almost none on the cherry trees.
The diagnosis: a combination of earwig damage and fungus.
This year we decided to grow some peas, both sugar and snow. They were sowed fairly early in the season well before the danger of frost had passed. There were a few cold spells including some snow and hail and they faired quite well.
Once they all sprouted and had reached a few inches in height the issue of trellising needed to be addressed. I have ordered some bamboo and bamboo lashing which is on the way but decided to make do with what we had around the house in the mean time.
The first apple blossoms in the last week of April!
There were a few clusters of these pink and white fragrant flowers on our Pink Lady dwarf apple tree. The bees swarmed these guys and did their business. Hoping for lots of apples in a few months!
With the rainy season coming to an end it was time to protect our young dwarf fruit trees from the potential sunburn which can increase the likelihood of borer damage.
Interior white latex paint was slathered on the trunks from soil level to about the height of first branches.
This is a project that I worked on during the winter months but forgot about until now. This was the first time picking up a crochet needle in oh.. about 12-13 years. It was a bit of a nostalgic project for me. I’d been taught many many years ago by an aunt of mine who was heavy into knitting and crocheting.
I started with what seemed like 1,000 of these little squares that are really quite simple to make. After a dozen they become tedious. Crocheting is a mindless relaxing past time for me so the tediousness really is tolerable.
We picked up 6 Dave Wilson Dwarf bare root fruit trees from our local
nursery including :
1 Double Delight Nectarine
1 Pink Lady Apple
1 Granny Smith Apple
1 Black Tartarian Cherry
1 Bing Cherry
1 Craig’s Crimson Cherry
First year for fruit trees! We picked this Dave Wilson double delight dwarf nectarine bare root and multiple other fruit trees up before we had their permanent home prepared. They’re living temporarily on the enclosed deck in heavy duty peat pots until fall.
Most of the gardening we’ve done up to this point has been for a practical purpose- food. We’re at the point now that we’re beginning to add some permanent landscaping purely for aesthetic reasons.
This project tackled a small area in the front of the house along the driveway. The 3 difficulties were 1) finding ground cover that would spread but was also visually appealing and 2) finding varieties that would thrive with next to no sun under mature pine trees 3) of course the obvious need for frost tolerant, hardy plants.
While doing some brush clean up I found a few attractive ground covers which seem to be thriving with no human attention. I took pictures with the intention of later doing some research to identify them. A few nights later while watching a TV show I stumbled on the answer- Miners Lettuce! and what a pleasant surprise it was.
Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia) is native of the west coast, grows well in cooler climates, and is a very hardy lettuce variety. Big shock here- it was eaten by miners which is how it got it’s name.
Some seed suppliers offer this variety but lucky for us it grows here naturally!
It is now the end of March and seeds are in the ground! Starting this growing season we’re still limited to 1 raised bed. The rest of the garden wont be prepared for another couple of weeks. Not wanting to miss out on valuable growing time the existing bed was churned up with compost and soil booster. This year we’re trying quite a few crops for the first time including peas, onions and carrots (which we tried last year but flopped).
The snow peas, sugar peas, and carrots didn’t make for enough content for a post so check back in a few weeks for a full post on each.
Onions being such a staple in cooking deserve a spot in the garden. Many books I’ve read also note their great storing ability which is very appealing. Having never planted them before I wasn’t entirely sure what to buy or what to expect. I ordered a few seed packets of various veggies from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds and added a 1lb bag of red onion sets to the order.
Our recent trip to the local nursery found us bringing something home that wasn’t on our list. These beautiful flowering Monrovia Jubilee and Misty Early Season Blueberries caught our eye.
These varieties are southern highbush blueberries, which have been adapted to withstand the hot summer months in the south and grow well in our area. They differ from the lowbush varieties that grow in the pacific northwest because they will grow 4-5+ feet tall if left untamed.
One bush will produce on its own and additional varieties are not necessary for pollination however, it greatly increases the yield. Read the rest of this entry »
We are nearing the end of March and now have blooming naturalizing daffodils and grape hyacinths!
The daffodils and hyacinths began popping up a few weeks ago and bloomed earlier this week. The deer have feasted on the hyacinth foliage as well as the tulips which I’ll post in a bit.
The country living grain mill is like the grand daddy of all grain mills and if dropped onto most every other one would literally CRUSH IT!
We had always wanted to make our own flour so that we could have the freshest bread and a grain mill seemed like the obvious choice for that. However, we also wanted to be able to use the grain mill if we did not have power, and we wanted one that would last a life time the country grain mill fit the bill perfectly!
