Thought I'd start this post off with a picture of Big Ben. For those of you who may not know, Big Ben is actually the neighbors cat, but I don't think Big Ben knows that. Big Ben hangs around our farm and helps us tend to the veggies and the orchard along with some light mouse hunting, his daily doses of much deserved affection, and of course his daily handout of food. His idea of helping today was to lounge and roll around in the strawberries as I was picking the ripe ones, and before you ask....yes, I had to lift a leg or two off of the strawberry plants in order to check for any strawberries he was hiding.
So far, with Ben's help of course, we have managed to actually get some fruit trees into the ground.... a total of 6 to be exact. We have the yellow delicious apple tree, the Jonathan apple, both olive trees, a Meyers lemon, and a grapefruit all planted.
This tree here is the Yellow Delicious Apple. It's the first apple tree that has gotten any blossoms on it so far and I'm hoping to have apples started soon on this tree. The yellow delicious and the Jonathan apple are both self pollinating and both will pollinate my two Anna's apples along with helping to pollinate each other. When deciding that you want to grow your own apples you really need to do your homework and even though some apples are self pollinators you still should have at least two apple trees. You also need to know what types of apples will grow in your area.
Here on the Farm we currently grow two different types of strawberries. The strawberry pictured above is a Tristan Strawberry. The Tristan Strawberry has Pink to reddish flowers and will produce medium to large Strawberries throughout the growing season, which starts early Spring and goes through mid to late Summer, and you can usually pick a good handful or so every other day. The other variety of Strawberry we grow is the Quinault Strawberry. The Quinault Strawberry is a much larger Strawberry. This variety of Strawberry has a white flower and does not Produce as many Strawberries as the Tristan. the Quinault Strawberries are the ones most commonly seen in the groceries stores and have a sweeter taste than the Tristan, but both varieties are easy to grow and very low maintenance.
Our Tomato plants now have flowers on them although I was unable to get a good picture of them. I am hoping for a good tomato harvest this year aswell as a good crop of blueberries. I have planted my Dragon carrots recently and they have started to sprout. Dragon Carrots are a purple carrot with a slightly peppery to spicy taste, unlike the sweet taste of the regular orange carrots we're all use to.
The onion's I planted last month are starting to make bulbs, the squash and cucumbers are hanging in there and I should have a few bellpeppers this year too. I also managed to plant my watermelon seeds and am hoping they do well. The only thing I have yet to plant are my regular corn seeds and my broom corn.
Well that's all for me for tonight, Guys, and Gals. So hopefully ya'll will have a great night tonight and I'll keep ya'll more up to date with the Farm now that we have gotten internet out here.
No comments:
Post a Comment