On a day like today one can, momentarily at least, forget that there can be any trouble in the world. The earth is bathed in new green, the air crisp and clean, birds singing their loudest song. Everything growing, all seems right with the world.

Here, the old faithful farm dog that sits out in the cold rain, watching over her flock(us) for hours while we work in the rain managing the berries. It is nice that we have been getting an adequate amount of rain. Got everything planted now, a few more apples, a persimmon, another cherry a red currant. Now as soon as it dries up a bit we can get to work in the garden. The strawberries we planted are doing well, The raspberries that came dormant and not very alive looking are sprouting now.

Well we valiantly tried what we could to save the cherry orchard. We used smudge pots and and were spraying trees down with water past midnight. After an inspection today, it is pretty clear that we were not successful. The cherries are brown.Tonight there is to be another freeze, so they are a lost cause. Blueberries with open flowers, exposed to temps below 31 degrees will lose 90% of the fruit. I think the early berries were in full flower. The leaves of the grapes and chestnut trees were completely froze and are crisp today.

Not too happy now...likely to have a hard freeze tonight

Happy news! We will be having some cherries! Sweet cherries! Yay! The Royal Anne, especially, is covered with green ones. I can hardly wait! Of course there is still a good enough chance of a hard freeze. and that would be so unfair. There will be pie cherries too, but it actually looks like the sweet will outdo the sour. My seasonal farm hand will be arriving in a week and she will be pleased also.

Red mulch

Red? no, blue! no, I guess red! Wondering just how tomatoes and strawberries were able to benefit from red mulch I had to research it and it seems that there have indeed been scientific trials and the results are in... not only do strawberries grow better..they also are more flavorful and aromatic!!!! ("20% larger, had higher sugar to organic acid ratios and emitted higher concentrations of favorable aroma compounds ") None of the colors were as good as black for weed suppression but PSU found that blue mulch did an even better job of increasing tomato yields. "The red mulch reflects wavelengths of light that cause the plant to keep more growth above ground...So reflection from the red mulch, in effect, tugs food away from the nematodes that are trying to draw nutrients from the roots," "The results are dramatic, Plants in trials inoculated with 200,000 nematode eggs and grown with black plastic mulch produced only 8 pounds of tomatoes, compared to 17 pounds for the plants grown over red mulch. "
Scientifically the conclusion....and the explanation on just why it works
..."it is concluded that strawberry and tomato yield and fruit size were responsive to morphogenic light (primarily the FR/R photon ratio) reflected from the SRM-Red mulch to developing parts of the sun-grown plants. The plants received incoming sunlight for photosynthesis, and the upwardly reflected morphogenic light apparently acted through phytochrome in the natural growth regulatory system within the plants to direct more photosynthate to developing fruit, which resulted in larger fruit and higher yield "
some other time, melons and green mulch...you heard it here first!

Does your mouth water and pucker just thinking about rhubarb? The rhubarb is ready and we have been enjoying it just raw and crunchy, love it so!!. We planted half of a hundred strawberry plants. we have all together: 50 Earliglow, June bearing, reported to be the tastiest of berries from Nourse; 25 Seascape- day neutral everbearing,, and 25 Sparkle, June bearing, from Lowes. Now interestingly the last time we had a big bed of berries we planted them by carefully spreading out the roots and this time we planted the roots straight down. They grew the last time but apparently we planted them the wrong way. Still we're getting a few berries from the old patch but one of us kept forgetting it was there and it kept getting mowed over. I have read recently that strawberries will produce heavier with a red mulch, I couldn't find any locally but I may be able to find an inexpensive red plastic tablecloth at the party store, I think I will have to have a trial. Tomatoes, too, are supposed to like it.

We have all the raspberries planted now, this is the first time we have tried red raspberries and i really don't know why! they are so good! We have had the black raspberries for a while. I still would like to get a yellow raspberry perhaps an Anne. the following are the three varieties that we planted, i think we are missing a productive fall bearing variety.
Prelude Red Raspberry ripens early June Rich colored berries are sugary sweet and bursting with juice. Plants are hardy and vigorous, with very few thorns. They produce an excellent crop of very early June raspberries that complement the strawberry season, the Prelude also produces an excellent fall crop of large, tasty, and easily picked berries in the cooler part of September & October that mesh nicely with the pumpkin season, even well into mid November !!
Lauren Raspberry ripens mid June The berries are very large, bright red, and are the sweetest of the summer cultivars .  It also has the longest fruiting season (4 weeks) of any summer red raspberry, and it tastes pretty good even when picked a little under-ripe. It spreads much less rapidly than Prelude. 
Autumn Britten Raspberry ripens mid July The earliest fall bearing red raspberry plant. The first harvests begin in late July and continues for weeks to months. Fruits are large and bright red. A preferred plant because of its vigor and disease resistance, not to mention the sweetest flavor

A cold blustery day, going to spread some composted chicken manure down on the newly planted berries, then add the shavings. have some of it done but still so much to do. The shavings are 20.00 a pick up load. They are from an Amish mill down the road, they process pine pulpwood for shavings and I believe that is all they do and sell tractor trailer loads to Kentucky horse farms...so rumor has it anyways. Rumor has it too, that we may get some snow :-(

What a treat to stand under the Kwanzan cherry just before it gets dark, when the sky is intensely blue, and look up through the pink blossoms!!! Oooh, Aahh! Gathered lots of lilac and cherry blooms for vases as tonight it is to be in the twenties and we shall have a freeze. We covered what we could, the rhubarb. peas, shisandra berry, kiwi, persimmon, delphiniums and i even covered the peonies that are beginning to grow.The lettuce has been covered since we planted it and it is doing nicely/

No photograph could do justice to the beauty of this one wild cheery tree, many years ago, well before we were here, there were cherry trees on the crest of the hill. None survived but this one tree sprouted up from a viable root and produced this tree. It gets no cherries but the spring show is spectacular. it blooms after the other domestic cherries, although the sour cherries still have some flowers the sweet cherries are through with flowering. The Kwanzan still have flowers, pink, and beautiful. We planted the last of the few blueberry bushes today..hooray but still have so much work left mulching, fertilizing and watering them.The raspberries should arrive this week.

Today we planted two Northern Spy, two honey Crisp and a Reliance peach and 35 more blueberry plants. I guess we have 6 peach trees altogether, the trees do not get very big the rabbits do not prefer their bark,they are relatively pest free and I don't think they are too choosy about the soil. Pears are even easier to grow and very long lived, apples seem to be the hardest to grow and cherries and plums too, the sour cherries are not fussy but the sweet cherries if not hit by late frosts or devoured by robins are susceptible to brown rot. There are still more berries to plant, but we have most of it done, even though it certainly was cold enough to snow.

A rainy cold day! We managed to get half of the berries planted yesterday,despite some periods of thunderstorms. They are healthy plants, hope we can keep them that way. There are too many mole/vole tunnels in the berries and I am going to try castor oil again, I do believe I had success with using it a few years ago, in fact I stopped using it because they were not a problem anymore. There was a foreign plant in with one of the berries, we suspect that it might be a jostaberry, we will plant it and see what it is!

Now the fun begins, the berries have arrived. I think we are ready,we have the ground tilled, the wood chips ready, the root enzymes ready and tomorrow is to be a nice day about 65 with a chance of rain. Hopefully the rain will arrive as soon as we are done planting. We are planting mostly Brigitta, but are also trying out a new variety Aurora which is the latest of all blueberries and a very old variety Ruble which is supposed to have twice the antioxidants of any other blueberry and we are also planting Chandler a relatively new variety that have very large and flavorful berries.

Cherry, peach, and pear blossoms at their peak and so as a farmer's life goes. the past two nights we have had a frost. We will see if we get any fruit this year. The apple blossoms are still unopened.I have been covering the rhubarb delphiniums and snap peas. I wish i would have covered the peach tree, they are small enough to cover

Tilled up some garden and planted some kale, lettuce, garlic and onions over the weekend. have been trying to find some Earliglow strawberries locally to plant but not having any luck, I did get some Sparkle strawberries and they are supposed to be flavorful and very hardy. So warm outside but to be in the 30's tomorrow night. We have some bees coming next week and 125 blueberry plants..going to be very busy!!!!

Have planted 3 apple tress, two Hidden Rose,. I am very excited about the Roma.-"juicy, crisp, hard, sugary and richly flavored, ripening late (October) and keeping throughout the winter. The late Conrad Gemmer, an astute observer of apples with 500 varieties in his collection, rated Roma an outstanding variety of top quality" and a Duchess-"A round above-medium-sized apple with pale yellow skin almost entirely covered with irregular stripes and splashes of bright red. Yellowish flesh, crisp, tender, juicy, brisk and sprightly - suitable for eating when ripe, but excellent for cooking throughout August and September. " Can hardly wait, but we will have to wait -several years at least, to enoy some.

Well, spring turned into summer in less than a week! It is quite warm now and is it my imagination or are things blooming at an accelerated rate, where forsythia and daffodils were tight green last week are now fully blossomed out.. Been busy with getting things functional again mowers, tractors, carts and such, seems every thing's tires have flattened over the winter.

The hillsides have their rosy blush, stippled mauve with an impressionist's brush, no other mauve so lovely.

The young apples were hard hit by midnight marauders, bark robber rabbits this winter; how discouraging, to see healthy vigorous trees that you spent good money on, gnawed on the whole way around. Yes, we wrapped them but not high enough in this year of record snow.. Well 2 thirty dollar replacements are waiting for there hundred dollar holes. Next winter we will wrap them to the high heavens, a good assurance that we will get no snow.

The chickens are laying up a storm of eggs now, as old as they are. there are 13, half are only 3 years old but the others have to be 6 or seven.The Silver Wyandotte, to me. is the most attractive. Personality wise, the Barred, Rhode Island Red cross are more likely to cross the road and are a little less friendly.

Hear the peep
No time to sleep
Spring, here, has begun......poppy
heard the first the other day!
We planted two double rows of sugar snap peas.. Super Sugar Snap and Cascadian Sugar Snap.

Another beautiful day, but still too wet for planting, at least here. I have seen others busy in their gardens, I even saw someone mowing the grass! A bit premature I believe, but I think it was a business' landscape man so that figures.

It's greening up outside, it was 60 today and to be 20 tonight, good weather for the sap to run. I will bring in a nice bunch of pussy willows. I don't feel bad about pruning it a bit that way , now that it is about ten years old, it's big enough to enjoy some inside .If it were not so wet out I'd think about planting some sugar snap peas. It is Saint Patrick's day tomorrow and one can plant potatoes now. No spring peepers yet. Anxious to get outside and scratch around!

silly billy blog nog