I spent some time recently walking around our property, surveying all the baby plants, and taking some photos. Some of our babies appear to have more promise than others, but I’m not feeling too terribly discouraged, seeing as our goal this year is to Grow Soil rather than necessarily to Grow Vegetables. We love our veggies, but we aren’t going to have much of a harvest until we get our dirt under control.
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| Anna Tree |
One thing that took me by surprise this year was the activity in the orchard. We haven’t even lived here for two years. Last February, we planted a number of trees, and then we tried to finish off the orchard this February {though I have since learned we may have a late-bearing orange tree headed our way}. All of this is to say that I didn’t expect any fruit for at least another year, if not a number of years from now.
But two of our apple trees are loaded with fruit. I quickly studied up on apple thinning, and the remaining fruit has really plumped up since I thinned the trees last week. Granted, these trees are still small, so we aren’t talking about a lot of fruit, but I expected nothing so this is a very pleasant surprise.
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| Anna Apples |
Anna is a lovely apple variety for the southern valley, as it is extremely low chill {less than 300 hours}. This past winter, that wouldn’t have mattered, but considering how mild some of our winters can be, it was a definitely consideration for us. Another benefit of Anna is its July harvest. We cannot wait to taste one, and the good news is that we don’t have to wait all that long! Our Anna tree was beautiful in bloom.
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| Granny Smith Apples |
The Granny Smith tree was not to be outdone. The apples were so numerous on the branches, they looked more like grapes before thinning. Just last week, they were only about 1″ diameter fruits, but they responded well to the thinning and plumped up quickly. What you see is over 2″, meaning they more than doubled in size in only a week.
I took a photo of our cherry tree, but it didn’t come out. There are three little cherries on it, from what I can see. Not a big deal, I know, but considering that we only planted her in February, I was quite impressed. Her friends in the last row–Idaho Walnut, All-in-One Almond, and Comice Pear–still haven’t woken up yet. To tell you the truth, that detail concerns me a bit, but there is nothing we can do other than wait and watch.
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| Peach |
Our peach tree also has a light crop. I cannot remember the name of this particular variety–Sunset, perhaps? Maybe Saturn. Something like that. It is the only tree we purchased that was bred to be ornamental as well as fruiting. She did not disappoint, for she was the queen of the flowers early this spring, and I was so happy that we remembered to plant her where we could see her from the dining room window.
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| Microclover |
We have made liberal use of our new friend and ally, Microclover {Trifolium repens.} One of the ways we are using this beautiful clover is to plant it around the base of each tree. I later read that this helps prevent erosion, but the main reason we did it was to try and keep away the weeds. Our new philosophy is that the earth wants a covering. Period. As long as we leave the ground bare, we are going to find ourselves battling with weeds. But, since we know that the ground is modest {as Si like to put it}, it is to our advantage to buy her some proper clothes, something that we like, and something which is useful when it comes to our other goal: growing better soil. So, clover it is. I’ll write more about this in a future post.
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| Future Strawberry |
In the meantime, the strawberry patch is beginning to perk up. I had my doubts about it; the babies didn’t handle transplanting very well. But they’re doing okay. We have a couple green berries that should be ready for eating {if the starlings don’t steal them} next week. I am hoping that this everbearing variety is aggressively stoloniforous and will fill in the patch quickly and efficiently.
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| Volunteer Sunflowers |
In other news, we had a number of sunflowers volunteer for duty. What a wonderful surprise! I didn’t replant sunflowers, but I suppose my delay in harvest last year meant that a number of seeds fell to the ground, ready for this year to come. We only picked one {because it was blocking the water supply} and are letting the others grow up tall. Hopefully, sunflowers get along well with tomatoes, because my tomatoes are going to need all the help they can get. What a sorry looking lot they are!
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| Zucchini Seedling |
My son and I soaked some zucchini seeds on a whim about a month ago. I hadn’t planned to plant any seeds at all since we were working on soil issues late into the planting season, but E. suggested it, and I figured, why not? They are tiny, but they’re looking good so far. If you look closely at the photo, you can see teensy tiny microclover sprouts. We call this “pastured gardening” and I am convinced it’s the next new thing in gardening!
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| Buckwheat Flowers |
Our buckwheat crop is still going strong. Our first winter here, we planted this as a sort of ground cover, to keep down the weeds. It was also an experiment, just for fun! We didn’t even buy the seed, but planted some of what we had on hand for our gluten-free diet. Usually our area is too hot by now, and the buckwheat would have withered and died away, but our spring has been so mild that it is thriving {even though we planted it late this time around}, and I am curious if we’ll make it all the way to seed. I love the flowers. They make me happy. So do the resulting pancakes.
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| Rouge Vif d’Etampes Pumpkin |
We also had two pumpkins come up! Technically, they are not volunteers, because I planted them on purpose. However, I did that last year, and our soil was so bad that I had only a 50% germination rate. Thankfully, none of the birds ran off with the seeds, and after some work early this spring, we have two pumpkins trying their best. These pumpkins are a French Cinderella variety called Rouge Vif d’Etampes, and they are supposed to produce a red fruit that is large–between 10 and 25 pounds. Unfortunately for us, all our little plot could muster was tiny little orange three-pounders last year. I am hoping this year turns out better.
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| Boadicea and Friends |
Of course, the pumpkin’s primary enemy in our area is…any and all giant Khaki Campbell ducks! I like to let the girls graze freely, but they simply cannot be trusted without someone keeping a close eye on them. They haven’t been out lately, due to our attempt to establish the clover. I read somewhere that they like clover, and I’m not willing to hazard a test of this until the clover has knit together a bit.
In all, things are shaping up nicely. We are actually ahead of where I thought we’d be on our five-year plan, so I certainly cannot complain. We’re learning a lot, we’ve had some failures, but we’ve also got some future successes to look forward–starting with {God willing} a large basket full of Anna apples come July!
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