Saturday, April 21, 2012

Sping is completely here now.

Pics from today.  I did manage to do a few things around the yard.  The Spring flowers are in the second wave - daffodils are done, and now tulips blooming.  Japanese plums and peaches are done and cherries are in full bloom, with early apples in bloom - North Pole and Liberty.  Euro plum (Stanley) is in bloom.  Grape hyacinths have started blooming, as are violets.  Fig embryos are swelling, but no leaves yet.  Mulberry buds are swelling.  The last tart cherry's buds are starting to swell.The garlic tub is flourishing.  So are the onion tubs.  These were planted last fall.

Grape hyacinths.  They come up all over like weeds.

Hollywood plum.  I don't know yet if it will bear fruit this year. Shiro seems to have some swelling embryonic fruit, but it's way too early to be confident about that.  

North Pole apple.  I did a good pruning job last year, I think.

Stella cherry (white flowers) is amazing this year. It's covered.  I did a good job pruning that one too.  Being self complimentary there.

Violets are spreading, bit by bit.  I need to help them along some more so they fill in and prevent weeds.

Organic weed killer.  Not perfect, but it's implossible to do it all by hand now, and this helps.  Plus, it doesn't disturb the mulch, so prevents more from sprouting.  Plus it smells really good.  It's made from citrus rinds.

Tanglefoot.  I pulled off the old "collars" and put on new ones, mostly made from polyethylene mailers off junk mail, and some zip-lock bags, cut into long strips.  Tie around the tree firmly.  It's stretchy so doesn't interfere with bark growth.  Then apply the tanglefoot.  It helps a lot to keep the ants and aphids off the cherries, and keep the ants out of the figs.  Ants in figs cause spoiling and loss of fruit, as well as giving them a nice crunchy texture.  Ants bring aphids onto cherries, and can damage the crop as well as cause a lot of leaf damage.

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