Apple Pie Season

I have been picking up useable windfall apples for several weeks already, but now the Northern Spy apples are starting to ripen by the basket load.  These are hard, tart pie apples that do not keep well at all.  By the time they soften and sweeten enough to be tasty to eat on their own, they are too soft for pies.  And then they get mushy on the outside so that they are impossible to peel anyway.  I have already given away several bags to people who look forward specifically to having the old fashioned and hard to find Northern Spies.

  We have two trees and I bag the apples to keep them from getting Sooty Blotch.  Oddly enough, over the years I have noticed that the unbagged apples show less and less of the blotch to the point that this year I don't really see any at all. I wonder if that is a result of bagging so many of the apples each year.  Have I killed it off?  Starved it out?  Or is it more to do with our dry weather?   I usually bag about 130 apples on this tree but this year I bagged 150.  The cool, wet June meant that I had almost no June drop at all.  The few bagged apples that dropped, I just reused those bags on remaining apples so that I went into harvest with a record 150 bagged apples.

The second tree is rarely as productive.  This year I did not bother to bag any apples on the second tree, but it still produced pretty well.  All of my apples survived two significant hail storms. There are a few scabby spots or mishappen apples.  Lumpy and bumpy.  The bagged apples showed the least damage.

The better tree is underplanted with thyme which cushions any windfall apples well enough that they don't bruise.  But once they start to color up well, I go out each morning and put a little pressure on the ripest looking ones to see if they want to come off.  If I let them all fall, the rabbits will have ruined most of them by the time I get out there in the morning.  This year I thinned and bagged those 150 apples without even getting out a step ladder.  But, there are still good apples high up in the tree.  I put my apple picker head on the 12 foot telescoping handle for our roof rake and now I can reach anything.

I have often weighed in apples over 16 ounces, but the more apples you leave on the tree, the smaller they are.  I still get a few really large ones around 12 to 13 ounces.

I have already run a batch through the dehydrator and made one apple pie.  It looks like I will be processing some of these for pie filling the freezer.

In and Out

 I have been hardening off my seedlings rather than just throwing them out in the cold frame.  I'm working around the house each day so it isn't too inconvenient.  They can be out for several hours each day now and by the weekend they will be fine in the cold frame all day.

The Coleus and Marigolds are out there already.

I am warming the soil for my Dahlias.  The regular soil temperature here is 50F but under the panels I have it up to 64F.

I finally got the Caesar's Brother Siberian Iris planted.  

We decided to remove the brick border.

We got our new mulch and finished mulching.

I am enjoying some of the new to me perennials.

This is Penstemon Onyx and Pearls.  The foliage stayed "green" all winter.

This is Amsonia Storm Cloud

I've had this several years, but it is the first year it has significant blooms.  
It is Lemony Lace Elderberry

The Bartlett branch of the pear tree is blooming.

Both Northern Spy apple trees are full of buds

The later blooming daffodils are opening and there are new variations every day

And the strawberry plants are blooming.  These are first year plants.  I snipped the runners from the neighbor's plants last year.

Spring is under way.

April Showers

The weather has been pretty cool and wet.  There have been some breaks of sunshine now and then but after you figure out that they do not last long enough for you to get outfitted and go outside, you realize that they may be best enjoyed through a window.  But every day I go out and do a garden patrol.  This is the time of year when the rabbits decide that the thyme under the apple trees would make a lovely location for a nest.  And I agree, it would be lovely.  But the itty-bitties are trouble enough when they are under foot in the lawn.  I sure don't need them based under the apple tree.  Usually just smoothing back the mulch and sprinkling some repellent granules around is enough to do the trick but this year they are busy enough that I have had to plug the hole with a big ol' rock.

The daffodils are beginning to bloom.  The little tete-a-tete daffs are the first.

The larger ones are not far behind.

The hardy primroses are still a little rough from being buried under snow for months but they are beginning to bloom.

I have been thinking of adding some bulbs to this corner by the deck steps.  I have to keep track of where things are planted.  This will come in handy in the fall when I can either plant accordingly or talk myself out of it completely.  The Winter Aconite should be showing up and blooming at the feet of the snow drops but they aren't.  I need to add some more this fall.

Oh look... the Hyacinths are coming up nice.

Last week I  planted some bareroot Seascape strawberries.  They are already greening up.

The elderberry bushes are leafing out.

I finally finished pruning on the apple trees.  I took a lot out of this one but it is still a very full tree.

Below are the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants.  They will be ready to set out in three weeks.  i am pleased with how compact they are staying under the new LED light set up.

And the micro tomatoes and ornamental peppers.  Such tiny little guys.

Yesterday I seeded the indeterminate tomatoes. 

More Pruning and Picking Up and Stuff Like That

 We've been working outside a lot and getting ourselves back in shape.  We both have a regular walking routine but all of this upping and downing and lifting on top of that takes some getting used to.  We're not old but we're not as young as we used to be.

After walking past the south apple tree for a week I became determined to top it.  This is not the first time it has been topped.  In fact, the current main leader is not even the original main leader.   There is no point growing apples up there.  I can't reach them even with my apple picker. So I got the big pole pruner out again.  This is how top pruning is accomplished.  This pole is fifteen feet long.  It's main job is to help us lift the telephone wires when we have to get a big truck in or out, but it is still sharp

First I set the pruner then I walk around the tree on all sides.  I've been planning this for awhile, but I have to keep in mind that a tree has at least 360 different angles.  Once I get that leader shortened, the one on the left has to come down too or else it will continue to out grow the leader.  The one on the right is marginal and can stay for now.

Once I get that middle section down, it is pretty gnarly.  I'm glad I did it.

This is better!

The left side looks like it could come down a little too but that can wait for now.

Another pruning project is the Nine Bark shrub.  These grow in a water spout shape and require special pruning.  If you want to size control them you need to make each cut right at the base of the branch or you will ruin its form.  Someone in our neighborhood tries to prune these like a regular rounded shrub and the mess it makes each June is interesting.  I will have to try to remember to take a picture.

To keep this from getting overgrown I take out about half of it starting with any weak or spindly branches at the bottom.

You can't really tell I took anything out.

Another project was the mess created by this big dead Ash tree.  It was actually the neighbor's tree and he got the trunk sectioned up and hauled away to his firewood pile a few weeks ago.  We need to roll the area to erase the heavy scar from the grass so we picked up any leftover bark and started sorting out our junk pile.

This junk pile gets relocated and reduced about every five years but there are still things we find a use for.  We just have to make sense of this mess.

This is better....

Easing into Spring

 The snow is finally melting and the sun is shining, but the ground is still frozen hard in many places.  While the wind can be bitter cold, once you got dressed correctly, and got used to it, the weather has been nice enough to get started checking on the garden.  The weather will be unseasonably warm in the 50-60Fs this week so I am making plans as to what needs to be done to take advantage of this.

The first thing I do is check on the rabbit and deer protection and begin moving things from plants that were at risk in autumn to evergreen plants that are at risk in the spring.  While newly planted bulbs (above) may be dug up in the fall by squirrels or racoons, the daffodil sprouts are safe but the evergreen leaves of Penstemon (below), Heuchera, Hellebores or Primrose will suddenly be of interest as they emerge from the snow cover.  Even if the deer just taste them and decide they don't like them, the plants can be set back for weeks.  I have begun scattering repellent granules around the crocuses and as soon as we have some foliage to spray I will switch to spray on repellent.

The rabbits were very hungry when the snow was thick.  Thankfully I had protected all of the fruit trees and they left the other woody shrubs alone.  I can see signs of their munching on the blackberry canes in the bunny patch.

Everything looks pretty flat from having the snow weighing on it for two months straight and some things have snapped.  The Butterfly Bush below shows some damage but it is still too early to prune it.

Any ground that was bare in the long cold has heaved up.  One end of the strawberry patch has heaved because the wire mesh caught all of the snow and the sun shone in under the south end.

Perennial plants are sending up shoots.  Below are the Valerian plants in my perennial herb bed, showing fresh red sprouts at ground level.

This herb bed has a challenging section.  You see that shadow cast by the top rail of the fence?  That ground stays colder and the sun is blocked all winter until the sun climbs up from the southern horizon.  I had planted Parsley in that end of the bed.  You can see that the plants survive to the south and north of the shadow but do not winter over in the shadow.  I seed annual plants in that strip.  I have a similar problem in the perennial bed to the north of the chicken run.  I had low growing Primrose planted in that shadow and while they survived just fine, the plants that lived in the shadow were always late to bloom.  I had to dig them up and relocate them to each side of the shadow.

The end of February, early March is also the time for pruning fruit trees.  This is a chore that I actually enjoy.  Over the years I have gotten better at it or at least more confident.  I have pruned these two fruit trees their whole lives and, for the most part, I think I have done a decent job.  They are both productive and fairly well shaped.  I am very diligent about taking out water sprouts or crossing branches, but I am more timid about header cuts that reduce the height of the tree and change its overall shape.

Before:  I have drawn red lines where I think I need to make cuts.

After:  I was pretty happy with the shape. 
We used a very long, vintage pole pruner to reach these cuts.

One tree (above) is more open and puts out less new growth but produces bushels of apples almost every year.  The other is more of a beauty queen.  She is nicely shaped and puts out vigorous water shoots each year, but is much more fickle about actually producing apples and can either amaze you or totally disappoint.

Before

On this tree I will still need to thin more out on the left (south facing) side.

After

There are a few basic principles to remember when pruning fruit trees. 

• Take out anything dead, damaged or diseased
• Take out anything growing straight up (usually water sprouts) or back towards the center
• Trees send growth hormone to the tips of each branch

That last one is the key principle and must be remembered each time you make a cut.  The last live bud on the end of what you leave, will be the bud that produces a branch.  Below I illustrated this principle on a water sprout, drawing lines from four of the buds.  If you were to keep the branch below you would want to make a cut above one of the buds that is pointing outward away from the trunk.  You would also need to remove the upward pointing sprout to the right of the one I have highlighted because these future branches would eventually cross and rub this branch.  This principle extends to rose bushes and woody shrubs.  There are many factors to consider when pruning a tree, but that is one of the most important.  Next chore: spraying them with dormant oil before they leaf out.

My raised beds have been heavily covered with snow for two months and look as perfect today as the day I prepped them for winter.  And there is not a weed to be seen which is never the case with a mild winter.

We have many snow piles left on the property.  My husband uses the tractor to spread them out where we have room.  This helps them melt faster and also helps control the melt water.  Some of the piles he scoops up and dumps in the roadside ditch where the melt water can run off without causing any problems.

Next spring chore: Clean any remaining leaves from the landscape beds and begin edging and mulching