Apple Bagging Time

Red flowered strawberry

I am just going to really have to watch for a phenology way to tell me that Plum Curculios are going to hit the apples.  They did some damage this year and it was right after the white lilac bloomed and when I saw the Rocket blooming in the ditches so that may be my clue.  Phenology helps in other garden timing.  Last year when I saw the first chicory blooms on the roadside I also saw my first squash vine borer adult on my squash plants - Mother Nature does sometimes warn us so we have to be observant.

I am working on bagging the apples but with the rain we have had it is making the job a bit difficult.  Plus, the rain has brought a nice crop of mosquitoes and they love to get my legs when I am under the apple trees.  The fruit set this year was poor and so I will never get 500 bagged apples.  My oldest tree, as I noted,  has a disease and the fruit set and leaf development shows the stress.  I am not cutting any branches off, I am just going to let the tree deal with the problem and see where we get.

I strung up the tomatoes and they are needing sucker pruning again.  I will also have to chop weeds out of the rows before I put down my straw mulch.  However, we had torrential rain yesterday that washed out some new plantings and so the garden must dry out before I can weed and mulch.

The lettuce crop is starting to overwhelm us but that is good as salads are a mainstay for meals here all summer long.  The garlic is producing scapes and they are part of tonight's chicken dinner.  More herbs have been planted and I finally got the summer savory in the herb area - winter savory is still waiting in six packs for planting - but the ground is too wet.

The greenhouse has a new water source, and as soon as the white hose gets here we will have water in place.  The electrician was here yesterday and now we also have power to the structure - fans help in summer.  I have the cotton planted in the EarthBoxes and I have three cucumbers in 5gal buckets that have really grow in the last week, so much so that I have to get the trellis system set up to get them producing a crop.  My benches should be here by the end of the week and then I guess we are in working order.
Happy Gardening

Tomatoes are grown vertical here.

Apple cluster before pruning down to one fruit.

Fruit bagged and the apple will grow in the bag through harvest.

The tree bagged.

Dandelion greens (Endive) and some lettuce too.

The fountain planted with Papyrus and Watercress.

A severe pruning of the lilacs.

The poor dove lost her eggs to a squirrel!