Showing posts with label Pruning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pruning. Show all posts

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Black Rot and the Swimming Pool

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After days of fall in mud puddles and traipsing through poison ivy, all of my shoes needed a good run through the washer and dryer.





Funny how kids today have never heard of doing that. I guess when we were kids it was something we always had to do, but these days either kids don't get their shoes that dirty, or they they just toss them out. I'm not sure. But YES! You CAN wash tennis shoes.

You need sustenance for all that relacing though.





Oh, and just because...

This is a great book. Don't let the cartoonish cover throw you. This book is just as good for adults as it is for the younger set.





I am always astonished at the lack of common sense I see in this world, and this book will help you learn to spot it, name it, and answer to it when you are faced with it.

The fig trees were pruned again. We began by cutting out all the bare wood on the first tree.





But we saw that some of that bare wood still had some life in it. It was hard to judge how high up that life went.

So we ended up leaving the rest at shoulder height.





Black rot has indeed made an appearance in our grapes. Michael went out and plucked off all the leaves with spots on them.









I know I should thin the clusters, but it's astonishing just how many there are.





Blackberries just about to bloom.





Maybe these are baby kiwi fruit? I hope so!





Time to take the pool deck apart.









Need to clear the earth away from the posts. None of that was there originally, just a bank. It had all eroded down and piled against the original pool.





Our stash at the back of the place comes in handy. We had torn down a barn a few years ago, and it still yields good stuff.





Part of it up!





Office cleaning awaited us, so we called it quits before we got much further.

A good day's work!

~Faith

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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Gooseberries, Cranberries. April 25, 2010

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Doesn't the herb bed look ready for the season now!





And we got this mound of earth that came from the French drain smoothed over a bank, so that will look nicer. I hope to make this area an addition garden bed, once the greenhouse is complete.





I didn't take any before photos of the gooseberries, but they had quite a bit of old dead wood. We have done relatively little to them since planting, so they needed some work.





The American Highbush Cranberries are something I wish I'd never planted. They were advertised as being edible, but the birds won't even eat these berries. They are a nice ornamental, but we certainly did not need a row of five of them in the crop area. One died and we removed it a couple of years ago. The rest seem to get a lot of dead wood and are not very attractive lately.





Since they probably need a good thinning, we decided to take out everything but last years new growth.

This was easier said than done. The trunks grow very closely and trying to get any sort of cutting implement in there to saw with was next to impossible, and quite a frustrating experience.

We were really grateful for the wind which was gusting heartily, cooling us off and blowing away any sort of annoying bugs.





Two done, two more to go.





We didn't finish, it was just too much to get done.




We got most of it done, and they look a lot better. The most horrible part of the whole experience is admitting just HOW we did it. We could not get the saws in there. We finally resorted to drilling tons of holes in the places we could get to, and then trying to break the trunks off where we'd weakened them. Some we could not even do that to, and the trunks are still there, filled with holes.

I hope that by fall they will be dead enough to break off.

Wishing our chain saw worked...

~Faith

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Burning Man Festival April 19, 2010

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Michael sets fire to the prunings pile.





More double digging raised beds.





My back is starting to ache.

~Faith

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