May 17, 2013 blossoms and baby trees in my 2013 food forest gardens and hugelkultur bed

Well we have gone through 2 spring frosts since the blossoms have come out, first one was 24 degrees, and the last one was just 33 at my thermometer, hopefully little damage. Some vines were blackened but mostly everything seems ok but will have to wait for fruit to see what actually survived.

Each year I like to add a few new fruit trees to the food forest gardens. Starting in the front yard I have two hickory nut trees, a plum, a fruit cocktail tree that only one graft lived on so I'm waiting to see which fruit (peach, nectarine, plum or apricot) decides to grow on it. Here is a  picture of that tree and a few trees behind it blooming from whatever roots of dead above the graft trees didn't get pulled out, likely peaches.

to the left of tese trees is this pretty little crabaple tree, it is old in the woodpeckers have been attacking the above tree and this one..not sure why...but so far they have survived.

These are to the west (left) of my front porch, and the following trees are on the right of my front porch. The one that looks almost dead is a Halls Hardy Almond, and I belive it either sustained winter damage or damage from last year's drought, the Peach (Contender) to the right of it also has had some damage, including half of it having to be cut out this spring from rabbit damage, neither have blossoms this year. To the right of those we lost a pear tree and had severe rabbit damage on two other pear trees which we cut down to about 5" tall, but they are regrowing (won't show up in photos though).

We will wait until thenew growth does finish on the almond before we prune out the dead, as I'm not sure what will still grow at this time. All of these trees are under planted with shrubs, perennial and vines in ornamental beds in the front yard. There are a few other edibles in the front here too, such as grape vines and currants and lots of other beds not in these photos.

Going around the EAST end of our house is a deck. Planted up against the deck are 3 more pear trees, they are just about finished blossoming but you can see a few blooms still hanging on.

There is a rogue cherry tree hanging out here as well.  These trees are under planted with comfrey and perennials as well as some nearby strawberries, a greenhouse and a hugelkultur bed in this area. Here are some shots of the baby hugelkultur bed (the bed has logs in it) which I'm just getting some planting done on. There are whips of baby peach trees on each end of the bed, some greens coming up along the sides and top and a few other things planted, mostly seeds aren't up yet...waiting for seeds to come up before I mulch it.

Around behind the house on the North side are some cherry trees, I planted several but some died and are  being replaced and planted elsewhere. The first  photo is a rogue from the roots of a Richland, not really sure what will come of it, the other is one that survived of 2 Dwarf Bing cherries.

These cherry trees are growing in ornamental and herb beds with lots of shrubs, perennials, herbs and even some strawberries as a ground cover. North of this area is our drainfield garden (you can see that in other posts) and then the large apple tree by the shed. There are also grapevines and climbing roses that will grow over several arbors on the property, some here.

North of this shed, arbor and apple tree is a lattice enclosed area that has a swing and several beds including my asparagus beds, some annual beds and a lot of baby fruit and nut trees. The hazelnuts gave me some nuts for the first time last year..the chestnuts are still babies as are the fruit trees and the berry bushes and  especially the  blueberries, most so small you can hardly photograph them. There are also honeyberry and gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, black raspberries, wild plum, currant and others growing in this area, I have baby kiwi vines I will be planting and there are grape vines which also began producing last year. Most are not yet visible this spring..just sticks.

Here are some photos of things you CAN see.

One of two dwarf North Star cherries, they won't get much larger than this and this will likely  be their first year to bear.

Nova Spy Apple tree baby I just planted this year.

Scarlet Canadian Cherry tree, the leaves turn red after the flowers fade and remain red all summer and fall.

These are Standard Peaches, one is a Hale Haven and one is an Elberta Peach.

Another baby tree this year (several planted each year). This one is a Stella Cherry, standard size and yet to arrive are another standard cherry ..Windsor that will go west of this one.

This is a baby Sweet 16 super dwarf apple, this is it's first year to bloom, behind it is a black raspberry bush and there are 2 baby sweet chestnut trees along the lattice fence.

Here are 2 of our 6 dwarf american hazelnuts, these bore for the first time last year, they are planted in a hedge along the north lattice, behind them are jerusalem artichokes (not up) and 2 mulberries, and west of them to the left out of  photo are 4 American Plums.

This is a dwaf baby Braeburn Apple, so far no blossoms on this little baby.

This is a semi dwarf baby Snow Apple, it has a few blossoms. I had to cut about 2' off the top of this one as the top died..but it seems to be recovering.

Enough for now, had a lot more photos to share but the computer is giving me fits so I'll post these one.

May 11 snow and grape jelly

Yesterday I noticed Ron had grape jelly on the shopping list..and we had an opened container of grape juice in the frig that my mom had given us. My mind clicked.."in 5 min I can have a batch of grape jelly made up" ..so I quickly poured 4 c of grape juice in my large pan and washed up some jars, stirred pectin in the heating juice and measured sugars..scalded jars in microwave (quick) and put lids on to boil..

In 5 min the jelly was in the jars..and I had some this afternoon on toast and it was really yummy.
We celebrated my mom's 93rd birthday today so I took her in a jar..which she loves..so that worked out well also.

Was raining hard when I left my mom's and when I got home ..this is what I was looking out the window at:

Many of our fruit trees were in

full bloom. This one here was in full bloom for several days and now is covered with snow..wah!

hard to see the blossoms under the coating of snow.

since I took this photo the snow has all melted..but the low is forcast for 30 tonight and 26 tomorrow night with a high of 39 tomorrow..so..

well we lost ALL of our fruit blossoms last  year to a 28 degree freeze..I'm hoping..praying..that we'll have fruit this year..we really need it. And I have a new canner !

Blossoms are opening on my fruit trees..woo hoo

Well there are blossoms opening on some of my baby fruit trees that have never born before, here are a few blossoms on a North Star cherry tree in my back yard. There aren't very many but there are tons of cherry trees in the yard so I'm hoping to get cherries on other ones too. This one has never born fruit so I'm excited to get some sweet cherries off of it. I had 2 of them but the other one, the top died on it.

The central on on this photo is a "fruit cocktail tree" that was originally grafted with 5 different fruits (peach, nectarine, plum and apricot )...all but one graft died on it, so it should be just one of the fruits, and it hasn't born yet, so we'll be interested to see which one it is..we have other peach, apricot and plum trees so a nectarine would be nice..but we'll see this year what makes it (if we don't get a hard freeze). It also has a bunch of woodpecker damage so we are hoping it doesn't die.
In this area there are other fruit trees, I'm not really sure what all of them are and none but the crabapple have born in this spot, so it will be interesting to see what comes on the other trees, there are several that have blossoms coming on them in this food forest bed.

In a future post I'll post more of the blossoms, but they are just beginning to open on the other fruit trees. Several of our apple and pear trees and cherry trees are loaded with blossoms, but they aren't fully opened.

Even some of our smallest baby trees have a few blossoms coming on them, including my very tiny Sweet 16 apple (it is a super dwarf)..has it's very first blossoms this year. In Michigan we are just now getting leaves on our trees and blossoms, and there is colder weather in the forcast so we are praying for a harvest this year.

I'm also pleased to have noticed mason bees are working among the fruit blossoms, love those little guys.

My first full week of real spring weather 70's, 80's, and 90's....

Well we went from snow to finally spring weather, and it was a lovely first nice week of spring. They forcasted rain but we didn't really get any. But we have had 70s, 80's, and 90's this week..with overnight lows in the 30's.

I have gotten back into walking for exercise, started out with 2 miles a day but did one 3 mile day with a huge hill.

Have gotten a lot of planting done (by the moon this year) and have a lot of seedlings on the window sills all over the house. (tomatos, peppers, squashes, melons, brussel sprouts, etc.)

Had quite a bit of rabbit damage so I've been doing some selective pruning of fruit trees and ornamentals that were damaged..some of the ornamentals were autumn olives and ginella maples that were 25' tall and had all the bark stripped off up about 2' from the ground. I cut those down and one of the autumn olives twisted and came back around and hit me in the back of the head, sending a 3" thorn into my scalp. No one was home to check it for about an hour or so, but it turned out to be only a 1/2 " cut, so all is good.

I also cut down the dead out of my climbing rose on the porch, it looks absolutely gorgeous this year, I'm very pleased with how it is doing.

The neighbors rented an industrial wood chipper for a day, and just before having to take it back they pulled it into my yard and helped take down part of the branch / brush pile in my front yard..couldn't do it all but I gained a nice pile of wood chips and the branches are more the ones I can handle with my little craftsman chipper that are left.

This afternoon I began hauling the woodchips to my garden, got a couple wheelborrow loads hauled but my back is fighting me after pulling all those big long 6" x 15' branches out of the pile so they could go thru the chipper, think I overdid it.

I was hoping for the thunderstorms they promised us for the last few days, but nope, nary a sprinkle..so now I have my irrigation system going on the rear garden (old drip system which I repaired on Monday)..glad to have it.

So far i have carrots, beets, parsnips, lettuce, kale, collards, asian cabbage, asian spicey greens, yellow and idaho potatoes, italian spicey greens, sugar snap peas, now and later peas, and a few other things planted..plus 4 of my fruit trees have come and gotten in their holes..still a lot to get in the ground. Had a problem with cats getting into two of my beds and digging so I'm hoping for a miracle there, and now they are covered with wire. ..to keep the cats and other wild critters out..seems to be working but i think my carrot and parsnip seed might have gotten buried..but there is a sign that some of the cabbage family plants are still going to come up.

got notice some of my other trees and shrubs are coming soon..already have some holes dug for them.

The rest of this weekend will be spent hauling more of the woodchips to the garden, pulling more weeds (mostly quackgrass that sneaks into my garden every winter)..and general clean up around the yard. No lawnmowing yet, but soon it appears.

no morels yet, asparagus is jsut beginning to peek thru the ground, flowers are ready to open on many of my fruit trees and there are leaves on the lilacs, aspens, willows and some other trees and shrubs..

I ordered myself a 3 wheel bicycle, 3 speeed, as my mountain bike is really hard for me to ride right now so i think I need the security of the 3 wheels..it came in a big box Friday and my son will assemble it tomorrow. I'm looking forward to building my leg strength back up with it (I am walking but I think I need this).

Hopefully will have some spring photos in my next post,,right now nothing interesting to photograph.

preparing for canning and preserving foods

Well since we were married 42 years ago, I have always used an old fashioned large canner for all my canning needs, and have always wanted something that would separate berry seeds from pulp as my husband can't tolerate seeds and won't eat much of my prepared foods.

So

This spring I ordered myself a new canner and a new victoria strainer with the attachment package from Amazon.

They arrived this week..The canner is beautiful and will be so much nicer to use, even read the entire instruciton book front to back. This is a metal to metal canner with the screw down things on the top, supposed to be more accurate and safer to u se. Bought some more canning jars and had some I bought before, so I'm ready for a good garden season this year.

I also purchased the new victoria strainer and the accessory package with finer and coarser screens and shorter spiral, so that I can now remove seeds from berries and tomato just putting them thru the processor and can process several other things more easily, it even has a salsa setting which will be nice to use.

One problem that I would like to make known to anyone planning on getting the Victoria Strainer unit..it doesn't fit on my countertops or kitchen area tables..it requires a very flat board with no lip and a sturdy surface to attach to, big mistake here not seeing that. After realizing it wouldn't work on my counter I did some sleuthing in my house and I found a fairly sturdy bookshelf that it will fit on, but that will mean hauling that to my kitchen whenever I want to use the strainer, I'll be looking for a better solution to that as time goes on, but can use the bookshelf in a pinch (have to haul it from the laundry room or find a closer place to put it).

I tried a new storebought product this week, Outshine frozen fruit bars, they are really good.

That gave me a really great idea for making homemade fruit pops, once I get the seeds out of the berries and such, as I have 2 of those frozen popsickle molds I bought at Meijer last year..that is always nice to have in the hot hazy days of summer. Looking forward to trying to figure out what I need to do to make my own after de-seeding the pulp of strawberries and blackberries and grapes..(a great way to use those pesky seedy heritage grapevines I have (over 100 year old)..so that has me excited to fix some new things.

As I said in my last post, with my back pain I'm fairly happy spring is coming on slowly this year, as I hurt too much to do much, but it will still all have to be done when  spring does arrive..in the meantime I'm going to be reading up on new reccipes and ideas for using my new toys..later

It's spring in the garden (or so the calendar says)

Well this has been a very rough spring for me. I am recovering from pneumonia and have something  wrong with my lower back, so I'm dealing with the situation in a slow manner.

Some of my plant orders and all of my seeds have arrive, but planting and seeding isn't going so well.

I am using the "moon phases" for planting this year, however, my in the house plantings didn't line up but had to be done. I started a few annuals in pots in the house, tomato, peppers, pumpkin, squash and brussel sprouts so far, and a few are up. I needed to do more starts inside but so far haven't gotten them done.

I knew that I had trees coming, so I went out a few days ago and used post hole diggers to get some holes started for the trees, breaking through the hardpan (that didn't help my back injury much). The next day the first of two tree orders to arrive this week came, it was much easier planting them when I already had the holes predug. So far I have panted 4 standard peach trees (red haven, hale haven, elberta and reliance), one of two of the cherries ordered (stella, the windsor is still to arrive), one apple (nova spy) is also planted this year so far. There are a few other trees on order yet to arrive. I also received a maximillion sunflower, which i potted inside, 25 strawberries that are hopefully surviving in a container in my frig, and 4 female and one male kiwi vine that are already vined and leafed out when they arrived, so they are also in a bucket on my windowsill waiting for non freezing weather to be transplanted outside.

I just hope the back will heal up enough to get the plants in when need be to do so, we have freshly fallen snow on the ground this morning, and I'm hoping the rabbits don't find my newly planted trees before I can get wire protection around them.

I have a little disappointment regarding some fruit trees and others on the property as we had a small amount of deer browse and a large amount of rabbit browse this March/April. checking earlier in the year all was well, but in March and April the weather has been horrible and the rabbits were breeding like ...well...rabbits and eating everything in site.

I lost completely one pear tree, and had upper graft damage on two others but believe they are savable as there is wood above the graft that I think has buds on it. One Plum was damaged severely above the graft but it also appears to have good wood left, There is some rabbit damage on one side of a peach tree, hopefully it will survive, and there is woodpecker or sapsucker damage to the almond and the fruit cocktail trees, hoping they can overcome that. Many of my nitrogen fixers and ornamentals have lots of very severe rabbit damage, but they are all grown on their own roots and should come back after I do some heavy pruning this spring.

I had two other pear trees that had been ruined above the graft last year, and I dug those up and planted them in a sunny spot back in the woods, and will allow the roots to grow from the rootstock and see what comes of them, I can always graft new pear wood to them later. (I have done that with other trees in the prunus family that have died above the roots, so that I have rootstock that I can graft other prunus branches too in the future, possibly a good way to save things that have been too badly damaged to do well on their own, and have planted tham all at woodland margins.

I did manage to get some mixed lettuce and mixed asian and italian greens planted on the baby hugelbed, but it has been way too wet and cold for them to sprout, so they may have to be reseeded, but I have time to wait and see. Didn't get my peas in, hope to during the next moon phase for planting them and plan to get my seeds in for root crops midweek next week (hope my back allows me to walk that far)..

This has been a disappointingly late cold spring, but I'm hoping it is good for the fruit this year to wait to open their buds and good for my back to have the rest. Otherwise there are some promising aspects with an overabundance of rain in the ground, lots of things that are growing that didn't get damaged, and the thanfulness that I'm doing no till, so I don't have to worry about getting out there and tilling mud..how awful it would be if I was still tilling with standing water over more than half of my property and snow on the rest.

I'm still optomistic..and am going to rest while I wait for mother nature to bring it on..happy spring.

found this interesting..what you need to start out on your own (during gold rush)

Yukon/klondikegold rushstampeder'ssupply list, 1898 Every person traveling to the goldfields of the Yukon Territory were required to take along one years worth of supplies. Every dealer of goods was ready to tell them exactly what they needed, and would sell the products to them at a very high price. There were also many how-to books for th prospector. Many were written by people that were never in the wilderness, let alone the Yukon.

List of items needed by miners distributed by the Northern Pacific Railroad:
For each man:
FOOD:
200 pounds of bacon (maybe some jerky or canned meat as a substitute for some of this)
400 pounds of flour (if you are going low carb might be able to do without some of this)
85 pounds assorted dried fruit
50 pounds cornmeal
35 pounds rice (I don't use rice so maybe some almonds and walnuts or some other replacement)
24 pounds coffee (don't use coffee thank god, that makes the load lighter)
5 pounds tea
100 pounds sugar (yuk, I don't use 5 # of sugar a year..so I'll have osme dried fruit instead)
25 pounds fish (or more..I love fish)
15 pounds soup vegetables (a lot more dried vegetables would be nice)
50 pounds oatmeal (yeah I would use this)
50 pounds dried potatoes (OK, but I might not need this many)
50 pounds dried onions
(25 cans butter
100 pounds beans
4 dozen tins condensed milk
15 pounds salt
1 pound pepper
8 pounds baking powder (I'm sure I wouldn't need as much baking powder, soda and yeast as I wouldn't be eating as much bread as normal high carb people, I've never gone through a pound of either in a year)
2 pounds baking soda
1/2 pound mustard
3/4 pound ginger
36 pounds yeast cakes
60 boxes of matches
5 bars of soap
CLOTHING:
1 suit oil clothing
3 pairs snag-proof rubber boots
3 pairs heavy shoes
1 dozen heavy socks
6 pairs wool mittens
3 suits heavy underwear
2 pairs Mackinaw trousers
2 pairs overalls
2 hats
4 heavy woolen overshirts
1 Mackinaw coat
1 heavy rubber-lined coat
suspenders, hankerchiefs, snow glasses
2 pairs of heavy woolen blankets
2 oil blankets
4 towels
buttons, thread, needles
5 yards mosquito netting
EQUIPMENT:
1 large bucket
1 set granite buckets
2 axes, plus extra handle
2 picks
handsaw
whipsaw
1 shovel
pack strap
6 files
drawing knife
brace and bits
jack plane
hammer
3 chisels
butcher knife
200 feet, 3/8- inch rope
10 pounds pitch
5 pounds oakum
2 caulking irons
15 pounds nails
tent
canvas
whet stone
compass
goggles
quartz glass
quicksilver
2 frying pans
coffee and tea pot
40 pounds of candles
eating utensils: plate, cup, knife fork, spoon
pots and pans
steel stove for 4 men
gold pan (and I'm not planning on panning for gold..so skip these)
gold scales Also additional items were noted, such as: medicines, reading matter, guns, ammunition and personal item

otherwise it has some good info..I would add some things like seeds, plants and cuttings if I was planning on living there and needed a garden as well and I might consider a small generator of some sort with batteries and chargers for computer and phone. I would also take some toilet paper if I was able to ..and some good scissors, knives and multitools..

a good reference list though to get an idea of what you might need..