Some of the berry bearing plants along our sideline, guesses anyone?
Plant one:
Plant two:
Plant three (looks like a type of grape to me, but….):
Plant Four (this one’s thorny if that helps):
Plant Five:
Gardening
I think we’re going to loose some of our apple trees….
We’ve got 3 yellow apple trees (I think they’re Golden Delicious, but not sure), 2 red apple trees (variety unknown), and 2 pear trees of two different types….
The pears are fine, normal fruit, normal looking trees.
The red apple trees also look good.
The yellow apples….not so much. The tree furthest from the house is also the one lowest (elevation wise) by a couple feet. That one never even bloomed. We blamed that on the weird frosts we got in the spring, but its just continues to look sickly, and I’m not actually sure it even formed buds in the first place….leaves are yellow, and the tree just looks “bleh” (I know, such a descriptor huh?). I tried to get a picture, but in every picture I took the tree actually looked pretty good. Oh well.
The other two yellow apple trees are a couple feet higher up, both have fruit, and one has a HUGE amount of fruit. But both are drooping badly, dropping LARGE numbers of their fruit already, have yellow leaves, and the larger of the two has several dying branches…..
We do have an insect problem, but we always have, and it doesn’t look any worse this year than normal. And the trunk and bark doesn’t look damaged in anyway.
I bought some fruit tree fertilizer, and put it down for all the trees, but I’m wondering if the insane rains we had are the problem. Doing some research it DOES look like its possible for an apple tree’s roots to get so wet that they just rot out from under the tree…..
Garden photos
My one and only baby pumpkin:
Every other female flower has died before blooming…..
Cantalope:
As you can see, there’s more coming!
And the watermelon:
There’s more baby watermelons coming too….
Now if only Mother Nature would stop screwing with us…..we went from HOT and WET to nice and dry, at which point EVERYTHING took off skyward, which was awesome….but now, mid-August, and we’re having nights in the 50’s, and even upper 40’s…..*sigh*
How to get a laugh out of thinning the carrots
I had to go back in and re-thin the carrots as apparently I didn’t leave enough room between them when I did it before. Oops. Oh well, the baby carrots were tasty anyway.
But in the process I found these two carrots:
I kept meaning to post it and kept forgetting, till today, when I read DIY Housewife’s post on her carrots. But I guess its a good thing I was thinning them a bit more!
Corn and updates
Ok, the instructions I can find on growing corn state that once the silk dries the corn is ready to be picked. But, can the weather force silk to dry early?
To check on my corn I pulled this one ear:
The visible silk was totally dry. Now obviously I have a fertilization problem, I planted these to closely together and so I will be hand fertilizing the remaining ears, but the kernels don’t look fully developed either? Not that the screwy weather hasn’t helped….
In other garden news I picked my first two zucchini this morning, I forgot to take a picture but they made 3 batches of zucchini bread…..
There’s at least one nice looking baby cantalope, and at least one baby watermelon. Pretty sure there’s a baby pumpkin. Carrots are HAPPY, and there are at least a couple Hot Wax peppers and several Jalapeno’s. So far no sweet peppers, but SOMETHING is eating the leaves, and I think I found the culprit:
I put this camera up in an attempt to watch the Ceder Waxwings that are nesting in that tree, the feeder contains raisens. No luck catching the Waxwings, but look-it what I did see…..headed straight for my garden. Why she’s only munching on the peppers and nothing else I have no idea….
Two of the Waxwings:
Garden update
The big tire
Yah, I need to pull the weeds around it again….
And some of the strawberry plants in it, these particular ones are Pine Berries though there are regular strawberries in there too
And the main garden containers
The pallats are to support the vines, if nessecary I’ll attach boards to support the pumpkins or fruit. The orange buckets in the background are my fruit vines and the rest of the corn, pumpkins and sunflowers, with the buckets acting as part of my watering system (which, I might add, I’ve only had to use once, cause it WON”T STOP POURING DAMMIT, ehm)
My sole remaining habenero plant, these were nice big seedlings when I put them out, this leaf is all thats left
And the rest of that container, some onions, some carrots, and some of the pumpkins
And the next container, with more carrots, the sweet pepper plants, and the zucchini
And the 3rd container, with the Jalapeno plants, more carrots, and the cantalope plants
Yah, I know, a ton of carrots. Wasn’t deliberate. I ordered 6 different varieties of heirloom carrots, figured I’d plant a few of each to try, and then plant more next year (or for a 2nd harvest this year) of what we liked. Each package warned to over plant and then thin due to having a low germination rate……I think every single seed sprouted…..
Container four has the Hungarian Hot Wax peppers, more carrots, and the watermelon (which you can’t see cause the plants are still tiny)
I hadn’t planned to plant watermelon, but one of the seed companies included a packet of seeds of them in with my order (free gift and all that), and for once the free gift was something that not only interested me but that also had a chance of growing in my climate.
And the last container with some of the popcorn
And while I was out taking these pictures I saw my first Catbird of the season! I’ve been hearing them for a while, but couldn’t find them to see
Garden update
Lets see…
The pumpkins are happy happy plants. A few leaves got damaged by the frost, but the plants themselves are bigger than ever.
Zucchini is also very very happy. I only planted 3 plants, and I’m seriously considering pulling one and making it only two. At the rate their growing even those three plants are going to produce a ton of zucchinis….
Cantalope is less happy, but not dead, I’ll take it.
Watermellon is refusing to germinate.
Onions are doing well, I lost a few when I first put them out, but most of them are doing well.
Carrots have all sprouted and I’ve been working on thinning them out.
Peppers…..sigh. I’m down to TWO surviving seedlings out of 15 or so I started. And although all of the seeds I planted for the 2nd round sprouted about half of THEM have died off TOO (and they’re not even out of the seedling tray yet!!). I have NO idea what I’m doing wrong there….I put the rest of the seeds double bagged in ziplocks in the freezer and I guess I’ll do alot of reading over the winter and see what I can do differently next year.
Popcorn is doing well. The ones I planted in the container are several inches tall, the ones I planted in the ground only got planted this last week so they haven’t sprouted yet.
Sunflowers which I planted at the same time as the last batch of corn are sprouting and look good.
The various herbs (pepermint, spearmint, and horehound) that I planted in containers last year are sprouting away no problem.
Garlic hasn’t sprouted…..I think I planted it to early in the fall (it sprouted before winter hit), and I think I THEN un-covered the containers to early this spring….oh well, will try again next fall with what I learned.
The giant tire flower planter is planted and done, pictures pending. Its got strawberries, purple Asters (they look like purple Daisys, so cool), purple Blazing Star, some daffodils, some iris, and hopefully some night blooming primrose.
I’ve got the remainder of the daffodils around the property dug up and I’m waiting for them to dry out a bit before I ship them off to their new homes.
I’ve been over-run by Pine Siskens
Huge bunches of them, perched on every surface waiting their turn at the finch feeder. I’m refilling that feeder once a day…..they’re such secure little birds that even me stepping out onto the porch to get this picture (instead of through the dirty window and screen) didn’t even phase them.
And the male Rose-breasted Grosbeak brought along his mate yesterday
And I still can’t get over how different the female Red-wing blackbirds look from the males
Not much else going on here other than the birds. We’re supposed to be getting a frost tonight (and come with in a degree or two of it last night, though I haven’t confirmed if it did or not). So all the garden containers got frost protectors last night, and considering the lack of warmth predicted for today I’m not going to remove them, just loosen them for some ventilation. I just hope the various fruit trees, which are all in bloom, can hold up cause I can’t do much about them.
Owww….
At some point over the winter I got the brilliant idea to see if I could acquire a used tractor tire to use as a flower planter to hide a stump in the front yard. I only just a couple weeks ago managed to track down one from someone who didn’t want a fortune for it (dude, you’d have to pay to have it hauled off to recycle it, I’m not paying you $50 for it), and Friday set out to cut out as much of the sidewalls as I could using my reciprocating saw (Dewalt 18volt cordless). Only to have the blade melt the rubber rather than cut it. Oops. Thats not going to work.
At that point a little light bulb went off, and I remembered a post over on Rural Revolution where they had cut a similar tire with their Saws-all, and had a similar problem. They’d managed it using a different type of blade, so I shot off an email asking for the specifics of the blade in question, and got a response nice and quick (THANKS AGAIN!!!!). For anyone wandering across this post with the same problem: the blade you want is THIS ONE, or similar type toothed blade. Finer teeth just melt the rubber. Even this one will melt the rubber if you’re unlucky, but it does cut it.
Did you know there’s about an inch of metal wire in the very inside of the sidewalls of those tires? That was NOT FUN to cut through, I think when I do the other side of the tire I’m going to see if I can just punch through without having to cut in from the edge……
Yes, I said when I do the other side. My poor little saw ran through two batteries cutting its way around the tire. But it did it. My hands HURT now though. Its not even really the arthritis either. I’ve cut wood and PVC pipe with the saw before, but this tire takes the cake. That hurts.
Gonna look cool as a planter though, WAY better than the random stump and weeds. Pictures when I’m done!
Yah, that’ll work
The baby pumpkin plants survived last nights dip below freezing with no apparent signs of problems. The ends that you see draping over the edges get turned up for ventilation during the day, I turned them down for the photo.