Starting in January

This blog will serve as documentation of our gardening efforts this year.  It will help us monitor annual tasks, like pruning, planting and fertilizing and see how those efforts impact our family-sized crops and landscape.

It's our first blogging effort and really is designed to help us remember what we do in the garden and the results of our work.  But suggestions from other gardeners are welcome.

January 2011
1/15/11

Pruned the apple, peach and plum trees

I always get anxious about pruning the fruit trees and am probably don't prune as aggressively as I should.  I'm trying to open up the center of the plum tree so that there's plenty of room for air and sunlight to reach the inside limbs.  But I'm afraid I don't cut the tips of the long branches off far enough.  As a result, I usually have lots of fruit at the ends of the branches.  But all that weight puts a lot of strain on the branches.  We have to prop them up as the fruit matures.  Sometimes that's not good enough, and the branch breaks.  This year, I've taken pictures of the pruned trees before they leaf out and will look at where the fruit develops.  Hopefully that will help with pruning decisions for 2012.


I removed some very large limbs on the apple tree in 2010.  As a result there were lots of small new branches this year.  I cut almost all of them off, especially those that were growing off the main branches.  The tree is shaded by a large oak tree and we also get lots of aphids and a dusty mold (?) on the leaves, so I want to make sure that air can circulate through the branches.

After many years of very few peaches and a tree that didn't ever seem to get any larger, I delved into some of my gardening books to see what was wrong.  I found out that I was supposed to prune 1/3 of the new growth back to the old wood; 1/3 was supposed to get pruned back halfway to the old wood and the last third of the new wood was to be left alone.  The first season after I did that, we got a great crop, for a little tree.  So I keep trying to do the same.  This year, I may have pruned a little too early because there wasn't much new growth.

1/22/11
I spent most of the weekend cleaning up an overgrown coffeeberry bush that "volunteered" in the garden a few years ago and then sprayed the fruit trees, berries and roses with Liqui-Cop.  In the past I've used lime-sulfur fungicides in the spring.  It will be interesting to see if the copper based solution gives us different results.  We usually get a lot of peach leaf curl in the beginning of the season.

We've also had trouble with what I think is the redberry mite on our blackberries.  We get a beautiful crop, but at some point, they stop ripening.  I don't know if the copper solution will help or not.

1/29
A great rain and wonderful visit from Rob were excellent excuses to stay inside for the weekend




February 2011

2/5
The weeds are exploding.  I spent most of Saturday weeding the rocks around the vegetable gardens.  There were lots of tiny grasses and those nasty little weeds with the exploding seed pods.  I don't know what they're called, but those weeds are everywhere.  I always wonder whether I should invest the time pulling the weeds when they are so tiny or wait until they're a little bigger and let them shade some of their "neighbors."  At least this year, I'll try to document the weeding activities and see if it makes a difference.

Last year there was so much rain, that I never really got ahead of the weeds, so there are lots more this year than usual.  Hopefully this year I'll be able to get up the hill soon and start yanking them out.  The poison oak is also looking very healthy!

I just took another look at my copy of "Pests in the Garden and Small Farm." It suggested spraying the berries with lime sulfur solution when the buds are about 3/4" -- so I'm off to spray.