So the trees have continued to bear apples. They are smaller apples, but we choose not to fertilize our trees or spray with any harmful chemicals. The apples still turn out fine, and undamaged by bugs– the only difference is that they are smaller. We have also continued with the pumpkins and most years the crop is too much for us to carve. This year a giant pumpkin was attempted, and although we harvested it green, it was extremely large and looked like a perfect sideways Frankenstein head.
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Apples
Our first apples are here!
We really did not expect crop so soon. Several trees have a good number of apples already. Our leaves definitely have scab or some kind of issue. We will spray this summer. We will also be placing grass seed in the next couple months to train the wild growth around the trees.
New hosting.
Today, June 25, 2014, Godaddy suspended use of QuickBlogcast, which I had been using to host and navigate this site. I am in the process of rewriting old content here from the emergency screenshots I took of the blog today. Stay tuned.
Mound gardening again.
Today, we used 1200 pounds of manure to start mound gardening. 300 pumpkin plants were planted. We hope to have a good harvest like last year. We planted much less last year, so we are hopeful that we will have more this year. Mound planting is a great way to successfully garden on untilled ground.
Trees are planted!
The trees have been planted!
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Some of the harvested pumpkins were thrown under a tree. Hopefully, the seeds will produce something next year. We’ll see.
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Marking off tree placement.
To give our trees the best possible chance of growth without an irrigation system, we are planting them in the fall. Today we marked off where we want them to be placed. Unfortunately, the varieties that are more resistant to scab and other issues were too difficult to successfully grow from bare roots. These special varieties must be obtained from far away nurseries, so bare roots were our only option. We have had to change course and will go with 4 local varieties: Red Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala, and Yellow Delicious. Their placement deliberately takes into account their pollination times, and cross-pollination needs.
The harvest!
Well, in the last post, I mentioned the snow. There were some flurries and hail earlier this week. For the most part, it was a very rainy summer. But the cold still kind of surprised us. The hail and sleet happened on the day we were finalizing placement of our next attempt at apple tree planting. It will be warmer again next week, in the 60s– so our planting should work out fine.
Here are pics from one of our harvest days.
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Family was in town, and the boys were excited to show their crop. We couldn’t take the truck and fit everyone, so we took the SUV. We were still able to fit a good number of pumpkins in the SUV’s trunk that day. My apologies for the sideways and upside down pics– the editing functions are not working for me today. You can still get an idea of our harvest, hopefully.
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Snow in October.
Well, a lot has happened since our last post. The biggest things is that we have a new baby! The arrival of new baby delayed my posting on the pumpkin patch progress. It is already October. We harvested our pumpkins a couple weeks ago.
Here are some pics of our pumpkins as they grew:
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I will post pics from part of our harvest in the next post.
Pumpkins.
We have had a lot of rain these past couple months. The drainage between 2 sections of our land will be fixed so that it will be easier to cross.
We tilled in sections of land to place mounds on the field for pumpkin planting.
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With the amount of rain over the past couple weeks seedlings were evident right away. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, all of our growing mounds were trampled by our neighbors’ horses. We thought perhaps it could have been a different animal, but the tracks were pretty clear. We were aware that horses were walking on the property, but had hoped they would stick to the paths they had been on. The mounds were fixed, and now we have place fencing around the area. Unfortunately, we will now have to place no trespassing signs on the land as well.
Cold fall and winter.
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Well, the land was cleared last October but we felt the ground needed more preparation. The thickness of all the growth will take a longer time to break down. The replacement trees arrived and are in our container orchard, along with the survivors from the last batch. They were dormant through the winter and we hope to see growth this spring!
We purchased some ground cover plastic, as well as fencing for preparation of the individual tree sites. We will try to limit weed growth and deer attacks.
We will have more tilling done this spring (very soon!) and have the soil tested to see what we may need to add when planting.