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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jan 26, 2015 10:34:08 GMT -5
The Dorsett Golden apple tree is in full bloom. The buds are opening on my Anna apple tree now. I suspect the cherry trees will be starting shortly - some of the buds seem to be getting bigger. The pear tree's buds look fat, too. The peach tree's buds are still tight, so it is not ready to bloom yet. The grapevines show no sign of blooming, but I have never seen them bloom before March, no matter how mild the winter...I wonder if those are day length sensitive? I won't be surprised if the sap is running when I prune them, though. Speaking of pruning, I started pruning my fruit trees yesterday. I know they should be pruned fully dormant, but they shouldn't be blooming in January, either. (I'm officially hoping that we don't have any more hard freezes now!) I got most of it done yesterday. The Anna apple and both cherry trees are done. I may be finished with the Dorsett Golden apple but I want to look it over in better light today before I declare it finished. I made most of the big cuts on the peach tree, but I need to thin out the small branches still...I may take another large branch or two as well. (I have to remind myself to be pretty ruthless with the peach tree because it grows like mad and will have disease issues if I don't prune enough.) I still have to prune the grape vines. That process is reminiscent of untying a big, complicated knot, because the vines grow and tangle together on my arbor during the growing season. Finding the canes to keep and amongst the canes to cut can be tricky. I've decided to dig up the youngest grapevine. It's supposed to be a Himrod, but I think mine is mislabeled. I had assumed the fruit was tart because my FIL was picking them too early. But last year mine fruited and even though I left mine on the vine for weeks they never got sweet - the birds eventually ate them. Since I know I am not happy with the fruit the vine makes, I may as well dig it up now while it is still relatively easy...if I wait another year or two it will be like digging up a tree! My pit is dug for my hugelkultur experiment. I am putting the fruit tree prunings in there. If I can get the (dead) orange tree cut down this week it will go in, too. As will the banana trees (the leaves are dead this time of year, but the big are alive and full of sap - so they count as green material) and some piles of yard debris which are in various stages of decomposition. Depending on how full the pit is, I may also add the partially decomposed stuff from my compost bin. I'll cover with a mix of soil from the hole and compost (the soil from the hole is basically sand - no nutrients and no organic matter to speak of). I'll use this area to grow melons and maybe a patch of corn. After enlisting my oldest two sons and DH to help get the pit dug, my sons told me they expected plenty of melons from that patch after all the work of digging the pit. Funny thing is, before he started helping me dig, the 14 year old had been saying that he wanted to build muscle in his hands and arms. I said, "I know how you can build some muscle. Shoveling is a great upper body workout."
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jan 27, 2015 10:48:07 GMT -5
I got somewhat sidetracked on the fruit tree pruning by clearing out the spent broccoli plants (they weren't dead but looked like heck), trimming up the collards and spinach, and transplanting a bunch of Super Sugar Snap peas that I had started indoors.
However, the peach tree is done, and so is the pear tree (it's a tiny thing and I almost forgot about it). I got started on cutting down the banana trees and hauling them into the hugelkultur pit, but didn't finish.
Those banana trunks are heavy - I had to cut them into two sections and drag each piece to the pit. I'm sure DH could have just picked them up and carried them, but I couldn't. At least I found an easy way to drag them - slam a metal rake into them so the tines sink into the stem. Then I can hold the rake handle and drag them behind me while walking upright - no back strain.
So, I am off to prune grapes and cut down more banana trees.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 1, 2015 15:34:08 GMT -5
We finally cut the orange tree down today...I've really missed that tree this winter. No going out to the backyard to pick oranges whenever I want.
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Post by stratcat on Feb 2, 2015 2:38:51 GMT -5
I'm sorry to hear about your orange tree. How big is your pit for hugelkultur? I really like experiments.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 2, 2015 10:39:35 GMT -5
Ah, well at least the orange tree can contribute to the hugelkultur experiment. And I have learned that all future citrus needs to be on the south side of the house where it will be more protected.
The hugelkultur pit is about 7' wide x 10' long and a little under 2' deep. Maybe it should have been deeper? But based on the amount of tree prunings, yard trash piles, banana trees, etc., that I have put into the pit and the amount that I still need to put in, it looks like I guessed the necessary pit volume pretty well.
Some of the old wood in the middle and bottom of the yard trash pile had visible fungus on it, which is good - that should help get the decomposition moving along.
My plan for today and tomorrow is to get the rest of the organic stuff in and cover it with just a thin layer of dirt from the hole. It's supposed to rain again Wednesday, which should wash that dirt down into the spaces between the debris. Then I can finish covering the pit with dirt and compost and mulch it.
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whistech
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Post by whistech on Feb 3, 2015 9:05:12 GMT -5
I got my pepper and tomato seeds started yesterday. I always seem to have a hard time getting the pepper seeds to germinate so I got a heat mat to try this year.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 3, 2015 9:08:35 GMT -5
I bet that will make a huge difference for you. On a different topic, WOW that back corner of my yard looks bigger with all of the banana trees cut down! I am really not looking forward to digging up that huge root mat, though. But today's garden agenda is other hugelkultur stuff, not digging up banana roots. That's a problem for later.
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Post by meandtk on Feb 3, 2015 16:17:18 GMT -5
Nothing going on in my garden today. I'll probably plant potatoes next week. I picked up about 75lbs of old produce from the grocery today. I plan to put it on the compost pile tomorrow or Thursday.
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Post by stratcat on Feb 4, 2015 1:29:42 GMT -5
Tuesday, the 3rd, I planted some Butterfly Weed in moist, soilless seed-starting mix. I placed the container in a bread bag and stuck it in the icebox (not the freezer). Prairie Moon Nursery recommends cold stratifying the seeds for 3O days to break the dormancy for better germination. I planted seeds that I collected last year from my lone flowering Butterfly Weed. Originally, I had five plants that I started from seed back in 2OO2 or so. The Coneflowers have crowded them out over the years. I want to dig up some more lawn and get a new patch established.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 4, 2015 10:24:26 GMT -5
Today I am watching it rain. Yesterday afternoon I took a break from the hugelkultur project to sow a bunch of carrots in my raised beds, so that Ma Nature could water them in for me today. Every year I wish I had planted more carrots, so this year I planted a lot. Virtually every spot in every bed that wasn't already full of garlic or shallots is now full of carrots. Maybe I planted enough this year. Most of the carrots I sowed from loose seed, but I also had a pack of seed tape for Scarlet Nantes carrots to try. However, I am not buying the "perfect spacing, no thinning" claims on the package. I could see the seeds inside the seed tape, and if they all come up I will have to do considerable thinning! The loose seed carrots were Scarlet Nantes (I had to have a control group for my seed tape experiment), Danvers Half-Long, and Touchon. I already had some Ya Ya carrots planted several weeks ago, which have been just sitting there in the short days, and are finally starting to take off now.
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Post by horsea on Feb 5, 2015 0:04:23 GMT -5
Tuesday, the 3rd, I planted some Butterfly Weed in moist, soilless seed-starting mix. I placed the container in a bread bag and stuck it in the icebox (not the freezer). Prairie Moon Nursery recommends cold stratifying the seeds for 3O days to break the dormancy for better germination. I planted seeds that I collected last year from my lone flowering Butterfly Weed. Originally, I had five plants that I started from seed back in 2OO2 or so. The Coneflowers have crowded them out over the years. I want to dig up some more lawn and get a new patch established. Your Butterfly Weed - is that a wild variety of Milkweed or some kind of cultivar? We have a wild pink milkweed called Swamp Milkweed that comes up in our yard not too far from the house in a large low wet spot with poor soil. Last year I saw a couple of Monarchs in my garden even though they are few & far between in general. Seems like only a few years ago, there were hundreds of monarchs in the yard. How they could go down so fast in number is some kind of mystery.
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Post by stratcat on Feb 5, 2015 3:46:05 GMT -5
Hi, Horsea. I'm pretty sure Butterfly Weed is a cultivar; more domesticated than the milkweed that pops up in the yard. When I last gardened in the ground out back in 2OO4, I let some milkweed grow up in the rows of corn for the Monarchs. That's not what the kids grow in corn, but illegal in town just the same. My friend with the barnyard garden had a Swamp Milkweed show up in a wet spot. Then he had to level his yard and fill it in. I remember you saw Monarchs last summer and I saw some, too. They aren't seen around here very much anymore. Tree thieves in Mexico are destroying their winter habitat. Also, I think something in the environment is killing them. Perhaps, GMO corn with BT. The corn pollen, including BT, drifts in the wind and lands on milkweed. The Monarch caterpillars ingest some as they eat on the leaves and die?
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Post by stratcat on Feb 8, 2015 17:07:56 GMT -5
horsea- I goofed up. Butterfly Weed is a wild milkweed with orange flowers. I forgot about that. It has a huge native range shown in green in this picture from the USDA. Nice writeup here. They recommend three months of cold stratification; I'll probably split the difference. Today, one Amaryllis has flowers open. Sure is nice to see color when there's snow outside.
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Post by horsea on Feb 8, 2015 18:22:27 GMT -5
Hi, Strat. Thanks for additional, correct, info! It is beautiful in orange, but our wild pink version is even nicer - the Swamp Milkweed. You can buy the little plants at a wild plant nursery here on the Cdn prairies.
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Post by stratcat on Feb 10, 2015 0:58:04 GMT -5
Hi. That's the one! It is indeed nicer than the orange ones. I collected some seeds from the Swamp Milkweed but never got around to growing any. Mom's friend has some Butterfly Weed and Swamp Milkweed seeds on order that she's eagerly waiting to get started.
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Post by stratcat on Feb 11, 2015 21:24:47 GMT -5
From today-here's one of the Amaryllis (I planted) in Mum's front window. C'mon spring!
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 12, 2015 9:20:36 GMT -5
That's so pretty. The red really pops with the snow-covered birdhouses in the background.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 20, 2015 9:07:07 GMT -5
Well, the sun is out and it has warmed up to 30 degrees as of 7:40 a.m. In a few hours I will be able to take the covers off the peas and tote my potted citrus back out of the garage to enjoy the sun.
The citrus might have been okay outside, but I didn't bring it in during the 22 degree temp we got in January, and all of the plants took some damage. The Meyer lemon had it much worse than the red limes - it almost ompletely defoliated after the January freeze. Since it has tender new growth just peeking out now, I didn't want to risk it getting damaged again.
I'll have to wait a few days to see how bad the apple blossoms and baby fruit took the cold. Everything else in the garden (lettuce, carrots, collards, spinach, garlic, shallots, parsnips, herbs) looks fine. One of the grafts on my 4-in-1-pear tree has a few blooms out - I haven't checked them yet. But since none of the other grafts have broken bud yet, those flowers weren't going to set fruit anyway. None of the other fruit trees have broken bud yet, so they should be fine.
I finally got my pepper seeds order from the Chile Pepper Institute and was able to sow my NuMex varieties (Primavera, NuMex Sweet, and NuMex R Naky) on Monday the 17th. So I am hoping to see those pop in 4-10 days.
I have lots of tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings under my grow lights. Germination on most varieties was good, but none of my Sweet Parade peppers came up, and germination on Lipstick was only 30%. I poked around in their seed cells and the seeds jhad apparently rotted. I didn't have any more Sweet Parade seeds, so I decided to sow more seeds of NuMex Primavera than I had originally planned. I can always use more mild jalepenos, and I have a lot of sweet peppers in the garden already. Maybe next year I can get more Sweet Parade seeds to try.
One of my SuperSauce tomato seedlings is a quadcot - pretty weird. But the cotyledons are sort of twisted and sticking up instead of opening to the light. All of the seedlings in that one cell are kind of a weird grayish-green color and are growing slowly, but they don't look diseased or seem to be damping off. The SuperSauce seeds were slow to germinate, too. Maybe it's a quirk of the variety?
I planted a fresh cell with more SuperSauce seedlings to see if maybe there was an issue with that cell. (All of the other tomatoes in that tray look okay, though). And since the existing seedlings don't seem diseases, I am going to let them grow and see how they look in a couple of weeks.
All of the other tomato and eggplant babies look good. I just hope it's warm enough to plant them before they get too big for their cells and too tall to fit under the grow lights!
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Post by paulf on Feb 20, 2015 10:47:53 GMT -5
Frozen ground grows nothing....come on spring.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Feb 28, 2015 22:33:25 GMT -5
Due to the warm weather that is supposed to start tomorrow, I am going to start hardening off my tomato plants outside. The forecast Wed-Fri is a bit iffy with some cool nights - I might have to bring them back inside at night. But they can at least start acclimating to UV light. The peppers are going to stay inside a bit longer. There is no need to hurry them, since they are not on the verge of brushing the grow lights like the tomatoes are. Amazingly, most of the baby apples on the Dorsett Golden tree did not drop after that last freeze. The Anna apple tree has some baby apples on it, and a lot of blooms still on it and buds open. The Dorsett Golden tree is almost finished blooming - just a few blooms and buds remain. It's too early to count my apples - some will drop in the next couple of months, and bugs and disease will probably get some. But there is reason for hope. The peach and cherry trees are buttoned up tight, still. One of the grafts on the pear tree is blooming, and there are just a couple of blooms on one more graft. The other two grafts are buttoned up tight. Probably no pears again this year, but that tree is still tiny, so that is probably a good thing. I'm really not sure what to do about that tree - I know pears are supposed to be slow, but this is ridiculous. I don't have another good plan for its space, so I guess it will get another year or two to give me hope that someday it will grow and bear. I've got carrots coming up from my latest sowing - finally! It's been pretty cold, so I guess slow germination shouldn't be surprising. Hopefully they will really pop with warmer weather. I am concerned that I am seeing some bottom leaves dying back on my garlic - it's too early! When the soil dries out more in a day or two I will do some exploratory digging and see if they are bulbing up early or if there is something wrong. If they are bulbing early, they might be small. The good news is that the shallots, previous sowings of carrots, parsnips, spinach, lettuce, collards, and the cold-hardy herbs all look good.
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Post by stratcat on Mar 1, 2015 0:51:28 GMT -5
In mid-February, I planted two more batches of milkweed. One container is Butterfly Weed and the one has two kinds of unmarked collected seed. I'm pretty sure I found four Swamp Milkweed seed and the other is probably old Butterfly Weed. Hope to get something going to plant in the lawn.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Mar 2, 2015 14:23:48 GMT -5
My tomato seedlings are outside starting to harden off. Peppers, too - they sort of shot up in the last 48 hours and were trying to hit the lights, too.
I may have to bring them in for 2-3 nights later in the week, but at least from now to Wed it will be nice and warm, so they may as well start learning to tolerate the sun.
Super Sugar Snap peas are starting to look bushy, but no blooms yet. Maybe soon!
I still have bottom leaves yellowing and dying on my garlic. The top leaves look nice and green. I dug down carefully with my finger and checked a few - there is no sign of bulbing yet. Roots and stems underground seem healthy, though. I am not sure what's going on with them.
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Post by w8in4dave on Mar 2, 2015 15:23:35 GMT -5
Oh my! Laura! How cool for you!! So excited for you!
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Post by daylilydude on Mar 6, 2015 7:33:43 GMT -5
I still have bottom leaves yellowing and dying on my garlic. The top leaves look nice and green. I dug down carefully with my finger and checked a few - there is no sign of bulbing yet. Roots and stems underground seem healthy, though. I am not sure what's going on with them. Laura_in_FL, Be patient... As the days get longer, the bulbs should start forming.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Mar 6, 2015 9:40:51 GMT -5
Right - I know it's too early for them to be ready, but the yellowing leaves at the bottom are supposed to be the clue that they are ready. So now I am not sure how I will figure out when to harvest.
My bigger concern is that with the bottom leaves dying off, the bulbs won't have any wrappers and won't store well.
Ah, well - it can't be helped, I guess. I wonder if the yellowing bottom leaves are because it's been so wet this winter?
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Mar 11, 2015 9:34:20 GMT -5
I got my tomatoes planted out yesterday - they are all settled in to their Earthboxes and SWCs. Today I get started planting the peppers. The extended forecast is 70s days and 50s nights. Since all of my peppers this year C. annuum varieties, I am going to go ahead and plant the first batch now. (If I were growing any C. chinense, I would wait until I was getting consistent 80s days/60s nights.) The peppers I will be planting today are all nice big seedlings, hardened off and ready to go. I still have some ornamental peppers and NuMex peppers indoors because I didn't have room under the grow light for the ornamentals for a while, and I got the NuMex seeds late. So, those plants are little things with mostly their first pair of true leaves. I also have a few cannas from seed under the grow lights. I have 4 seedlings out of 9 seeds - one has been up for a while and the other three just popped up a few days ago. I am amazed at how fast they grow. Especially compared to the Dragon Wing begonias I am growing for Mom. I sowed Mom's begonias in January and they took 3 weeks to sprout. The seedlings were incredibly tiny when they emerged - just little green specs on the surface of the soil, not much bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. I guess their growth rate was actually pretty fast as a percentage of their size, but it took a solid month for them to reach pea-size. The bigger ones are just now a couple of inches tall. However, now that they have a few leaves at nickel size or larger, they are growing fast. All of the begonias except for one slowpoke will probably be a good transplant size in a month. I am optimistic that they will bloom in time for Mother's Day.
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aqua
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Post by aqua on Mar 12, 2015 10:33:39 GMT -5
Still pulling up carrots in NE Fla. And still trying to learn how to post pictures...
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whistech
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Post by whistech on Mar 12, 2015 14:11:34 GMT -5
Aqua, beautiful carrots and it looks like you learned how to post pictures.
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whistech
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Post by whistech on Mar 12, 2015 14:14:22 GMT -5
I was going start hardening off my tomatoe plants today, but it's about 60 degrees and rainy and seems a little cold to me so I will start hardening them off tomorrow when its supposed to be 70 degrees.
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Post by meandtk on Mar 12, 2015 17:24:01 GMT -5
Will soon start dividing seedlings into larger containers. The rain has been falling much, so it probably will be almost a week before I can work the ground.
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