2018 Spring update

On the Farm

At the end of each season, I am going to write up what we have been working on…mostly it has been planting and getting the garden area ready…

The past 3 months we have planted:
25 June bearing strawberries (10 went into my raised strawberry bed and the rest went into the food forest area) and 10 ever bearing strawberries
2 Pecan trees – none of these lived
2 Walnut trees – 1 of these seems to be growing from the base the other is dead
1 Almond tree – growing good
1 Chestnut tree – did not grow
1 Sugar maple tree
2 cannon firs and 1 Concolar fir (future Christmas trees)
8 blueberries
25 asparagus crowns
2 rhubarb (also got a couple transplants from a friend)
1 lemon tree – this is in a pot that will come inside in the winter
1 European Beech tree
2 Grapevines
1 black Elderberry
1 Service Berry
1 Pussy willow
1 Pear tree – also appears dead
2 Seaberries – these are not looking too good either…

Let’s just say dozen’s of herbs, flowers and vegetables…most gardening places have a 1 year guarantee on their plants so I have requested new nut trees to replace the ones that did not grow.  Now for some pics…

Asparagus crowns ready to be covered up

Baby asparagus…so cute!

Then, I posted this past week on Facebook that I heard in a podcast that you can plant strawberries among your asparagus.  So, I ripped out the 10 June bearing strawberries that I had started in their own little raised bed and transplanted them among the asparagus.  I didn’t really care for the little raised bed that I had made for the strawberries and I was already planning on using a pallet to plant my strawberries in next year.  Actually, I probably will start a strawberry pallet next spring too.  Can’t have too many strawberries! 

I had been to a “garden center” type place this week to replace one of the honeyberries that I planted last fall.  They had some ever bearing strawberries for sale so I bought 10 to put in the other asparagus bed (I have 2-12 foot long asparagus beds).  I just planted them down the middle…

A friend of mine had delivered to us a huge pile of oak leaves last fall.  I used most of them in the food forest area.  There was still a small pile of leaves left this spring once the snow melted away.  I started cleaning up the rest of the leaves and noticed several acorns.  So, I planted them…

…and 3 oak trees grew!  I did not include these in the tally above.  I will be putting them into their own pots and make sure they are growing good.  I will probably plant this this fall.

Grapevine that I am trying to trellis along a fence.

Went to Disneyland in March over spring break and had a great time!

Mark and Henry on ride at Disneyland.

Joshua and Henry at the beach in California

Henry, Mark, Denise and Joshua outside the Cars ride at Disneyland

Right after school was out, Denise and the boys went to visit family in Kansas and we brought back some blackberry bushes…

Now, I have to tell you the story behind these blackberries.  When Henry and I were first married, we lived in North Carolina and I planted these thornless blackberry plants.  Mark was a toddler and he would walk up and just pick the berries right off the plants and eat them.  He was often covered in purple blackberry juice…so cute!  

Anyway, my mom took a few starts back with her to Kansas one time when they came to visit us in NC.  Of course, the blackberries took over her garden!  After that, we moved to Florida and then to Idaho.  So, now I am going to be getting back some of the blackberries that I had like 14 years ago!

Transplanted blackberry starting to grow!

This is why people don’t grow sweet potatoes this far north…LOL.  It got down to 38 degrees and they were frosted!  It is a little hard to see in this pic but 2 of them really did not have much damage.  So, I have marked them and I am going to save sweet potatoes from these to make slips next year.  I’m sure if these would have been covered, they would have probably been okay but this happened when I was away in Kansas.  I planted them in this old tractor tire because I thought it would be hotter for them in the black tire.  The good news is that about 90% of these have made a come back and are green again.

Frosted sweet potato plants.

Lastly, I just finished planting my sunflower seedlings yesterday…the slugs are still being problematic but over all, I think there will be a good amount of flowers…

…in fact, it looks like we might have our first bloom opening today!  I took this pic this morning!

I am scheduled to be at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday…hopefully, we will be getting some more flowers opening.
~Denise