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Saturday, July 20, 2019
July 20 kitchen garden and orchard video tour
It's hot but the garden and orchard are doing well -- here's a video tour from today:
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
May 22 garden and orchard tour
Here's the first video tour of 2019-- featuring fewer vegetables and lots of new fruit trees, shrubs and vines:
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Better home-grown strawberries in 2019!
This year I'm really getting honest with myself about growing strawberries. In the past I've thrown a few plants into the ground, got a year of large, delicious fruit, then spotty, diminishing production in subsequent years until I give up, rip them out and start again. Even in good seasons I had problems with mold and with critters eating the fruit. Overall, strawberries have been disappointing in my garden.
It was during a NOFA RI tour of Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown Rhode Island this summer that I faced the truth -- my strawberry crop was inconsistent or bad because I'd been lazy.
I looked out across the neatly spaced rows of berry plants surrounded by straw and vowed to do better.
Here is a pic of the bed in December:
The three key tasks for maintaining my berry patch are: cleaning up old foliage and creating spaced rows, transplanting runners, and mulching for air flow and raising the berries off the ground.
Yesterday I began my renovation by trimming and raking a wheelbarrow load of old foliage and stems out of the patch. I should have done the cleaning in late fall, but spring is ok as long as it's early.
I ruthlessly dug out runners (baby plants still connected to their parents) to create three rows of crowns about a foot apart. I learned this summer that thinning actually leads to more fruit, as the remaining plants have room to grow and the better airflow between plants reduces the chances of disease.
Next I sorted the runners, discarding those with mostly old dead roots. Then I planted three rows of runners in a new bed. These are for next year- I'll pinch off any flowers this season to let them concentrate on strong growth that will produce lots of berries in 2020. I was careful to position the crowns of the runners flush with the soil level-- too high or too low can result in struggling, unproductive plants.
Here's the bed after all this work:
Next year I'll pull out the plants that fruited this year (they get less productive after 2 or 3 years), add compost to the bed, and replant with runners. To have good productivity in the home garden really takes two or three beds of strawberries in rotation.
I fertilized both beds with 10-10-10, but did not add any lime or wood ash. My soil PH is a consistent 6, perfect for strawberries, which like a PH between 5.5-6.5.
Next I'm going to chop up some dead and yellowed top growth ( excluding flower heads) from my bed of tall grasses, and put this straw in the aisles and under the foliage as mulch to suppress weeds and (again) maintain good air flow. If I don't have enough I'll buy some straw.
And I vow to keep the beds weeded! Grasses are the main weed pest of my strawberry beds. Left unchecked they steal much needed water from growing berries.
What about the critters eating the berries? I plan to use bird netting on low hoops over the bed, starting before the berries are red. This will deter most of the birds. I'll still lose some berries to chipmunks, but with greater productivity that shouldn't be a big problem.
I've also had issues with rabbits eating strawberry foliage in the past, but only plants in the ground rather than in raised beds. The foliage seems to be an opportunistic rather than a preferred crop, and the bunnies don't bother to try to climb into the raised beds to eat the berry foliage.
All that work yesterday only took about an hour. It's really not much to do in exchange for sweet home grown berries, so much better than store bought!
It was during a NOFA RI tour of Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown Rhode Island this summer that I faced the truth -- my strawberry crop was inconsistent or bad because I'd been lazy.
I looked out across the neatly spaced rows of berry plants surrounded by straw and vowed to do better.
Here is a pic of the bed in December:
The three key tasks for maintaining my berry patch are: cleaning up old foliage and creating spaced rows, transplanting runners, and mulching for air flow and raising the berries off the ground.
Yesterday I began my renovation by trimming and raking a wheelbarrow load of old foliage and stems out of the patch. I should have done the cleaning in late fall, but spring is ok as long as it's early.
I ruthlessly dug out runners (baby plants still connected to their parents) to create three rows of crowns about a foot apart. I learned this summer that thinning actually leads to more fruit, as the remaining plants have room to grow and the better airflow between plants reduces the chances of disease.
Next I sorted the runners, discarding those with mostly old dead roots. Then I planted three rows of runners in a new bed. These are for next year- I'll pinch off any flowers this season to let them concentrate on strong growth that will produce lots of berries in 2020. I was careful to position the crowns of the runners flush with the soil level-- too high or too low can result in struggling, unproductive plants.
Here's the bed after all this work:
Next year I'll pull out the plants that fruited this year (they get less productive after 2 or 3 years), add compost to the bed, and replant with runners. To have good productivity in the home garden really takes two or three beds of strawberries in rotation.
I fertilized both beds with 10-10-10, but did not add any lime or wood ash. My soil PH is a consistent 6, perfect for strawberries, which like a PH between 5.5-6.5.
Next I'm going to chop up some dead and yellowed top growth ( excluding flower heads) from my bed of tall grasses, and put this straw in the aisles and under the foliage as mulch to suppress weeds and (again) maintain good air flow. If I don't have enough I'll buy some straw.
And I vow to keep the beds weeded! Grasses are the main weed pest of my strawberry beds. Left unchecked they steal much needed water from growing berries.
What about the critters eating the berries? I plan to use bird netting on low hoops over the bed, starting before the berries are red. This will deter most of the birds. I'll still lose some berries to chipmunks, but with greater productivity that shouldn't be a big problem.
I've also had issues with rabbits eating strawberry foliage in the past, but only plants in the ground rather than in raised beds. The foliage seems to be an opportunistic rather than a preferred crop, and the bunnies don't bother to try to climb into the raised beds to eat the berry foliage.
All that work yesterday only took about an hour. It's really not much to do in exchange for sweet home grown berries, so much better than store bought!
Thursday, February 21, 2019
2019 orders for the orchard
Here are the details of my spring orders for the orchard:
One Green World 2019 order:
One Green World 2019 order:
- Autumn Beauty Jujube Tree
- Black Sea Jujube Tree
- Crandall Black Currant
- Flowercloud Male Hardy Kiwi
- Anna Hardy Kiwi
- Marron Medlar Fruit Tree
- Pasha Male Arctic Beauty Kiwi
- September Sun Arctic Beauty Kiwi
Stark Brothers 2019 order:
- Starking® Hardy GiantTM Asian Pear Dwarf
- New Century Asian Pear Dwarf
- Pennsylvania Golden PawPaw (Grafted)
- Sunflower Pawpaw (Grafted)
- Carmine JewelTM Bush Cherry Dwarf (2)
- Prok American Persimmon (Grafted)
Fruit and nuts and perennial food crops, oh my!
We bought our house and the surrounding acre of property in September, 1992.
The following April I was delighted to see hundreds of daffodils blooming in the overgrown beds that flanked the backyard stone patio. Later emerging gifts from the past included peonies, iris, and two mature dogwoods flanking the front of the house. Other remnants of the original garden were not as welcome, including dying ornamental cherry trees and a scruffy forsythia hedge.
Over time I created a hybrid ornamental garden featuring the best of the existing plants, trees and shrubs with my own choices- mostly native shrubs and perennials. A new septic system mound became a mass planting of grasses and blueberries where the cherry trees had been. And every year I either divided old clumps of daffodils or added more varieties.
I have always planted a few vegetables, but did not become a vegetable gardener on a larger scale until the economic downturn of the early 2000’s, when growing food became something of a necessity — perhaps more of a psychological than economic one. I soon discovered that I enjoy the idea of having control over my food, but I also love the calm oasis of a well designed ornamental garden.
For the last ten years or so, I’ve been working to integrate those two needs by creating a kitchen garden full of vegetables and colorful, often self-seeding annual flowers.
So now my garden is evolving again, into something less physically taxing but still food productive.
I already had a mature peach tree, two pears, blueberries, blackberries and a large bed of raspberries.
.
Last year I added a mulberry, dwarf self-fertile cherry, persimmon and paw-paw, and even some nuts -- American hazelnuts!
This spring I'll be adding much more. Pics and details to come.
I’ve chosen species that don’t have a lot of insect or disease problems, but are not commercially grown because they aren’t easy to harvest with machines or do not ship well. I’m also expanding my plantings of other perennial crops, including asparagus, rhubarb, fiddleheads, Egyptian onions, ramps and shitake mushrooms.
Eventually I hope to have a garden that will showcase a wide range of wonderful but less commonly grown fruits, nuts and perennial crops, produce food that I can eat fresh and process for winter use, and require less heavy lifting and digging. I’m looking forward to the journey to that goal!
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