Mini Orchard

We have a few fruit trees.  They were planted at different times so they are various sizes.  The oldest is 8 years.  The newest was probably planted about 4 years ago.

Every year there has been one problem or another.  The peaches developed peach leaf curl, so now I spray for that every winter.

The dead wilted leaves are the result of the fire blight.

The apple trees developed fire blight.  I have been fighting that for years. You can only treat fire blight two ways.  One is by cutting off the affected limbs.  Other than that, you must spray every three days after you see the buds and until they flower out.  I did this AGAIN this year.  It is better, but every week or so another branch starts wilting.

  

One year we had quite a few peaches on a young tree.  There was just enough to make a pie. The next morning when I went out to pick them,  the entire tree was stripped of peaches and there were a lot of peach pits under it.  We had a small wire fence around the tree and some small animal had bent up the bottom and had a feast.  The last few years we have had a problem with a late freeze after the peaches have bloomed.  This kills the blossoms and means no fruit for the year.

  

The late freeze this year destroyed the apricot blossoms.  One of the peach trees is a late bloomer, so it has lots of peaches.


  


I may actually get some fruit this year!  I will have to fight off the deer and other fruit lovers, but that is RJ's job.

  

The early blooming peach has a few peaches on it, but they look damaged and spotty.  If you are a peach tree expert, send help!  I am supposing the frost damaged the blossoms a bit, but not enough to totally destroy it.  They may be edible.  I'll find out in a few weeks

If you are an expert, I know I have put off trimming the trees. I plan to catch up this winter.

  

I have a few plums on the young plum tree.  That looks promising!

The Granny Smith tree with the worst of the fire blight has a few apples, but we have two of them and the healthier Granny has quite a few apples!

  

When my sister died I was devastated.  My friends at the Fincastle library got together and bought me a pear tree.  It now has a few pears for the first time.  I will think of her every time I eat one.

Fruit Stakes

We have been fighting fire blight on our apple trees for years.  Once it gets into the trees it is very hard to fight off.  There are only two ways that I can find.

  

One, cut off all branches with withered leaves.  The cut has to be 6 inches below the infection and you must dip the blades of the clippers in a bleach and water mixture between each cut.  This prevents the blades from spreading the infection.

  

Two, spray with Fertilome.  It only helps to spray right when the buds on the tree emerge in spring until they flower.  I sprayed every 3 to 4 days at that time.  And still I get more blight on my branches.

  

This year, in addition to spraying, I will be adding some fertilizer.  The theory being that a strong plant can fight off disease easier.  Of course it could be that a healthy plant will push the blight throughout the tree.

  

Lee helped by using a heavy pole to make a hole deep enough to drop in the fertilizing stake.  You can pound them in, but if the soil is too hard, the stake will break.  You place them around the tree at the drip line, or as far out as the branches grow,  If you place them too close to the tree, you can burn it with the concentrated fertilizer.

  

There is no downside to this.  I help the trees or the fire blight consumes the trees.  If that happens I will I tear them out and quit fighting.

It is very discouraging.  We have had these trees for about 5 years and they are just getting to the point where they should be producing a significant number of apples.  I no longer complain about the hight cost of fruit and vegetables.

Last Spray

I sprayed the apple and pear trees for the last time this morning.  I like to do it in the morning, before the wind picks up.  They have all been hit pretty hard with fire blight.  I tried the organic method of getting rid of it.  This involves cutting each and every branch 6 inches below any area with blight.  I lost huge portions of the trees and it still came back each year. 

 

Then I was told, at Southern States, about Fertilome.  The county extension agent didn't tell me about it.  I asked a landscape guy and he told me to tear out the trees. No other store I went to and asked told me.  Only Southern States

 Fire blight is a bacterial infection in the trees and it needs an antibiotic...Fertilome. 

  

Baby apple

I have sprayed every 4 or 5 days since they just started to bud out.  The Fertilome container says I can stop when they develop fruit.  That looks like fruit.  I'm stopping.



Baby pear

The trees look way better.  There are a few branches I intend to cut off, but that will have to wait until Lee brings back the Mule where the tools are in the glove compartment. 

 

He is working on the barn for our new tenant.  I am excited to have horses here, again. Especially when I don't have to scoop up after them and carry heavy bags of grain and shavings.

Beating Fire Blight

 
I sprayed the last dose of Fertilome to control fire blight in our apples this morning.  The blossoms are almost gone and spraying must be done before that time.  It doesn't work after that and I don't suppose you want to spray the apples with antibiotic.

 

Our lone pear tree had some serious pruning to cut off all the affected branches.  I hope it comes back.  I didn't do a lot of trimming of the cross branches in the apple trees this winter.  Ordinarily you trim those when the trees are dormant, but I had trimmed so many fire blight damaged branches and I didn't want to stress the trees any more than I had to.

 

The two Granny Smith apples are coming along well and I think we may actually have some apples to eat this year.  Yay!  My peaches don't seem to have a problem with peach leaf curl, even though I was a bit late is spraying them.  I have to remember to spray for bugs as I lost my crop last year to a swarm of wasps.  Yes, they eat peaches.  And, yes, I don't want to try to pick peaches covered in wasps. 

I don't know how the people who raise organic produce do it.  I tried that route and lost several years of fruit and almost lost the trees.  N o more for me.  Better living through chemistry, I say.

 

In the meantime our garden is starting to come back from Winter.  It needs a bit more growing time and we need to finish adding mulch. 

 

Some of the flowering plants are gorgeous. I want to buy more and keep the flowers going year round.

 

The garden entrance to the B&B is improving every week. 

 

There is a circle of pink Dogwoods and they are in bloom.  They will be prettiest for just a few weeks. 

 

We have plans for a few more flowering plants, but just haven't had the time or energy.  It's on the list.  That ever growing, no matter how many things you accomplished, list.

You have one of those, right?

Round Up Time

Today was the first Round Up time of the year.  Oh, you thought I meant rounding up cows?  Oh.  No.  That is too much work for us.  In fact, I can no longer grip weeds hard enough to pull them from the ground without snapping them off.

 

So I make a big batch of Round Up and spray the suckers.

First I sprayed a dose of antibiotic on the apple trees.  So far it seems to be working on the fire blight.  I would love to have my first apples this year.

I sprayed the peach trees a little late, but spring is a little late this year, so they seem to be doing okay and I haven't seen any peach leaf curl.

 

Then I started on the Round Up.  I only sprayed two gallons and it did all the gardens and around the fruit trees. 

 

I guess it helps to do it early in the growing season, before the weeds get too big. 

 

We are getting a lot of onions this year.  It smells funny when we mow.  Almost like I am preparing dinner!

I didn't even rinse the sprayer after I sprayed the antibiotic.  I didn't care if the weeds got a smidgen of it along with the Round Up.

I even had enough to spray the vegetable garden area.  I wanted to kill all the weeds before I dig the soil in preparation to plant.  Lee wants to do corn this year.  And I want to plant rhubarb.  I may skip the tomatoes.  I have problems with them splitting and I can just go to the Farmer's Market in Daleville and let them deal with the rain and the weeds!

 I may do zucchini, but have had problems with vine borers.  You have to spray for them every week or so and I don't always get to the plant before the borer does.  Very discouraging.  Basil does well and I love it, so that will go in, too.

 

It looks like most of the blueberries came through the winter okay.  There are two that haven't started budding, but I will wait a bit to see what happens in the next few weeks.  I fed them some Miracle Gro for acid loving plants and next I will get some pine mulch and they should be ready to do a little bit of harvesting this year.

I killed a bunch of weeds today, sprayed for fire blight and fed the blueberries.  And now I quit for the rest of the day.  Time to knit.  A girl has to pace herself.  And knitting is working.  It is just sitting down and watching TV working.  I'm okay with that.

Farm Chores

The last few days have been taken up with farm chores

I mentioned previously that we have a fire blight problem with our apple trees.  The last two years I tried to control it by cutting off the infected branches.  I know that you are supposed to spray them with an antibiotic, but could never find it in any of the local Big Box stores.  I even called a landscaper, thinking I could pay them to do it.  Nope.  They recommended the death penalty - tear them out and start over.

 

I decided to give it one more try and went to Southern States..  The lady there was VERY helpful and told me they had the antibiotic.  I bought it and came home to start spraying.

 

You need about 1 1/2 teaspoons in a gallon of water.  That is enough to do our three apples and one pear.  They are not terribly big, partly because of extensive pruning of the affected branches.  I need to mix up a batch and spray every 3 to 4 days. 

 

The worst part is getting it in my face when trying to spray the tallest branches.  Not sure giving myself an extra couple of doses of antibiotics is a good idea.

 

I will spray until they start to develop fruit and then hope for the best.

Lee and I have also been cleaning up the barn.  This is a project we meant to get to before winter, but didn't.  Then is was winter and far too cold for that sort of thing.  Wrecking my sacroiliac slowed any outside chores.

 

But now I have no excuses.  We pulled a lot of stuff out of the barn and tossed it.  I saved a few things for if (when?) we have B&B guests with horses.  You never know when you will need an extra halter or lead.  There are a few things that need to be washed before we store them, like the horse blankets.  We are waiting for a sunny day so they will dry before nightfall.

We also have a lot of saddles and bridles we need to find homes for.  We plan to contact the 4-H to see if they can use them.  Or maybe a local pony club.  If you know of an organization that would use them, contact me.  I can sell them on craigslist if I don't find a worthy spot.

 

The biggest problem is the underground excavation going on.  Now that the horses are gone and we aren't there everyday with the dog, some critters have set up housekeeping under the stall mats. 

 

They dug in from the outside and spread the dirt and rocks all over the place.

 

Just so you know, stall mats are heavy. And ours are made from mining belts.  Super heavy duty.  And really long.  We had to use a hay hook to catch an edge and roll them back.  Then I brought in shovels full of the rock and dirt piled up outside and filled the tunnels.  Some went under two mats!  I stamped them down and replaced the mat.  It was a lot of heavy work and the plan is to drive down there everyday and wander around a bit with the dog to keep them out.

I need an owl.

 

On the plus side, the barn looks pretty good and the fields are greening up nicely.  I love this place.

 

A Late Start

    

I has been so cold for so long that I didn't even try to start the garden.  I don't grow a lot of things, but I love to grow zucchini, yellow squash, herbs and tomatoes and then I can make some fried green tomatoes.  I rarely find green tomatoes in the market.  Hmmm.  I wonder if you could make BAKED green tomatoes.  Gotta look into that.

Any way, I decided to spend some time in the garden.  Lee had some other things to do, so I didn't have the usual help.  He generally gets giant scoop from the compost pile with the tractor and dumps it in the garden for me to work in and refresh the soil.

   

The fruit "orchard" (Is 8 trees an orchard?  Yes, I decided.) is on the way to the fenced garden, so I had to get a bucket of bleach water to take with me.  Last year I had a bout with fire blight on the apple trees.  Fire blight kills the leaves and branches and they look dark brown and burned.    I didn't spray for it this year and now another tree has it.  You have to spray just when the blossoms are out and at no other time, or it doesn't work.  You don't even know if you have it then.  We weren't here when the blossoms first developed, so no spraying.  But now one apple tree is badly infected.  Fortunately, the Granny Smith apple trees seem to be OK this year.

     

I discovered ( I love Google) that you can cut off the infected branches, but you have to use a mix of bleach and water to disinfect the blades in between each cut. You don't want to spread the disease.  Sadly, some of the largest branches of the tree were the most affected.  I had to make some pretty severe cuts and I hope the tree can recover.  We may not live long enough to have a decent crop from our fruit trees.  Every year is some new disaster.  At least this year the spraying I did over the winter kept the peach leaf curl at bay.
 
   

After butchering my apple tree, I went to the compost pile and filled the back of the Mule.  There was still some remnants of the black weed cloth I had used in the garden from two years ago.  Last year I just added a huge pile of hay on top of the existing weed cloth as a mulch, and it worked all right.  But now the weed cloth has broken down and I have to start fresh.

   

After clearing all the dead debris and weed cloth, the hard part began.

       

The Mule is great for moving things around, but it is too wide to fit into the garden.  I had to scoop and fling to cover the entire area with an inch or two of compost.  I do this every season to add nutrients back to the soil that the plants removed.  I hesitate to call compost made mostly from horse manure, nutrients, but there you have it.  Plant nutrients.

When we moved here about 5 years ago, the soil was pretty bad and rock hard.  We have been working in amendments every season and now the shovel just slides in.  But it is still a chore to work in the new compost each year.  I spread it all over the raised beds and then did some digging. 

   

Essentially you just take a big bite with the shovel and turn it over in place.  If the soil clumps a bit, I chop at it with the shovel, move over and do it again. 

   

I do this every foot or so .  It isn't a big garden, but it feels that way when I am digging in it or weeding it.  I am actually pretty good about getting a garden ready.  It is the follow through where I fall down.  I hate the constant weeding.  That is where the weed cloth comes in.  It lets water through and allows the plants to breathe, but keeps the weeds out.  The only bad part is that it doesn't last for more than a season or two.

I raked everything smooth and decided to finish another day.  Maybe a day when I start the work at 7 AM rather than 10.  It is hard to imagine it was freezing just a few days ago and now it is in the 90's.   Plus I got a boo-boo. 

   

This is not indicative of all my hard work.  It is indicative of my NOT working and keeping up my calluses.  So I bought a lottery ticket in the hopes of hiring out the physical labor around here.  It would be my own personal effort in job creation.  And that would be good for the country and I am nothing if not a patriot.

I guess I better not say that too loud.  Wouldn't want to attract the attention of the IRS.

Odds And Ends

Usually when we go on vacation I clean the whole house first.  There are a few reasons for this...besides my OCD.  If we get robbed I don't want the cops to think we have been ransacked when we haven't!   We usually have someone to pet sit and I don't want them to see how we REALLY live...a bit of tongue in cheek. But most importantly I don't want to come home to a dirty house.

With our power being out for so long before we left, I had to settle for sweeping and wiping down surfaces with a spray bottle of cleaner and some paper towels.  So now I have to clean up when all I really want to do it rest up.

Leaving in the summer also means that the weeds take over.  I hadn't weeded for awhile because it has been so hot and I couldn't take a shower with no power to run the well pump.  No point in getting sweaty and dirty when you only have baby wipes to clean yourself.

                           

My favorite method of weeding is to spray with Round Up.  Lots of times when I pull the weeds, they snap off at the ground leaving the root to regrow.  We also have a lot of weeds with thorns, like horse nettle, and they can poke rather painfully through even the thickest leather glove.  Another advantage to spraying is not having to bend over.  So when I can I spray and when I can't I pull and that was a task I had to do this morning, also.

                          

The fire blight that has attacked my apples has a big more blightiness left  and I had to trim a few fruit trees.  I had to remember to dip the blades of the pruners in a 10% bleach solution between each cut.

The cut branches had to be placed on the burn pile which has grown out of control again since the storm that toppled so many trees.

The tomatoes have outgrown their cages and were in danger of toppling.  I found a few tomatoes that I picked while they were not quite ripe.  The last time I waited the birds ate them.

                               

I found a zucchini for dinner.  The first one!  Oh, man.  Do you see the ones that I found after a bit of digging?  I may have to make zucchini bread or cake or something.  Or maybe something savory so I can use the basil.  I'll have to think about that.

                               

There are a bunch of zucchini flowers that I am considering making into fried zucchini flowers with goat cheese. 

                          

We just went to the store yesterday to replace EVERYTHING...you know, mayo, mustard, salad dressings...everything that had to be thrown out.  The inside of the refrigerator door is looking nice and tidy, though, in case I am looking for a silver lining.  And I am.  But it means no more grocery shopping for awhile and so no goat cheese.  If only we had chickens and goats.  Only kidding.  Downsizing the animals is my current philosophy.

I have finished all the things I had to do today and now I will do something I want to do.   Maybe I'll knit.  Or read.  Or maybe I'll try to find something to fix with zucchini.  I just got a new recipe book around here somewhere.....