Eighty-degree days are already upon us. On Thursday (April 13th) A ate our first ripe strawberry. Since then, J has already raided the garden several times to pick and eat "ripe" strawberries (she is now banned until we have an opportunity to pick some ourselves). Also on Thursday, A set out tomato starts that she has been tending for weeks now. Unfortunately, a gate was open and our extremely persistent Rhode Island Red hens got into the garden and picked the leaves off of four or five of the plants. Thankfully, some of them were still salvageable. We have made it clear to the girls that for the remainder of this season the hens are to stay inside the pen. They are little eating machines, and they are very persistent in their attempts to get into the garden and eat those delicious little plants we're setting out.
The fruit trees have all been blooming nicely. The flowers have mostly already come and gone (see last month's post), except for the Montmorency cherry trees (which are currently in bloom now). We have not gotten any cherries since planting them in the winter of 2011/2012. Here's to hoping we actually get some cherries this year. The plum tree is covered up with little green future-plums. Similarly, the two Elberta peach trees we planted last year (?) appear to have quite a few peaches.
We stopped at Bates Nursery yesterday and got three more trees:
- Flavortop Nectarine
- White Lady Peach
- Moorpark Apricot
I put the apricot tree, which requires more attention (i.e., watering during any dry spells) near the rear of the house. It's a small tree, only getting 8-10 feet tall. The peach tree went behind the existing peach trees (near the bees) and the nectarine tree went in the back corner.
A couple of weeks ago I also planted almost a dozen trees we got from the city (free trees!). There were four or five Cherrybark oak trees and six or so hazelnut trees. They were all bare-root and very small, so we may or may not be around to appreciate the shade or nuts from those trees!
The blackberries seem to be doing really well. If I can keep from mowing or weed-eating too closely, we might be getting quite a few berries this summer. I really like blackberries, so I'm really hoping we get a bumper crop this year. I worked on mulching some of them this morning and tying them up to get them off the ground.
There are a two grapevines and two muscadine vines that made it through the cold winter. I've also been tying those up and mulching around them in an attempt to keep down the weeds.
The only thing that probably doesn't appreciate the heat is the sugar snap peas. We might have planted them a little too late. It's always hard to tell when to plant those - too early and they freeze, too late and the heat stresses them out.