Anna Hutchins

You could always try different herbs on your roast, he suggested sagely.  

I don't have a true food forest, just random edibles stuck around in my landscape.  Some truly are as low maintenance as advertised.  Figs and asparagus and sorrel and perennial herbs all take care of themselves once established with just some extra water and fertilizer.  They're great!  The black raspberries are pretty good but really want to take over. So get ready to prune and dig.

But then there are the "other" established perennials in my yard.  We're talking a constant struggle.

It's too hot and dry every summer for strawberries so I start losing them.  It doesn't seem to matter how much water I add.  The apples, even the crabapples fill up with worms... So I'm going to have to start spraying them with kaloin clay or something...  The opposite of low maintenance.  Same with the peaches... Also add on the fact that the squirrels got every single one of them this year.  *shakes a virtual fist*

Probably to be truly low maintenance I'd need to get a terrier and some chickens... but I live in town.  Bleh...

Wow, that's funny M Ljin!  I was just listening to a version of that song today.  The version you shared in much more melodic and ephemeral.  So here's the upbeat one:  (I don't know how to embed it.)

Edit:  Ethereal... Not ephemeral.  Darn vocab...

Well those weren't the leaves I was expecting! I would put money on it being some kind of callery pear.  But boy that thing is tall and skinny!

Not my favorite tree by any stretch of the imagination, but that one is quite impressive!   (If it is a callery pear, they stink when they bloom in the spring, they are weak wooded and break extremely easily, and in my part of the country they are very invasive, displacing native trees.)

There's a lot less smoking of cigarettes in there used to be. And of course you're not allowed to do it inside.  I for one appreciate that it smells a little nicer with better air quality. I have met just a few people that smoke pipes though and those smell amazing!  I suspect only vanishingly few people do that now.

I'm also in zone 6 but at a  much lower elevation than you.  Down here on the plains we routinely have a time of the summer where it just gets too hot for new to set on. I've been told that the pollen of most tomatoes varieties is sterile at temperatures higher than 85° F.  I usually still get some cherry tomatoes through the summer so I'm surprised your Sun Golds aren't doing anything. It's probably just too darn hot.

Also too much nitrogen tends to do nothing but produce lots of pretty leaves. If you're just using compost it's hard to over fertilize.  Miracle Grow on the other hand could be too much nitrogen if you're doing more than the package directions.

I know a lot of people garden in raised beds because of the perception that you can't improve the clay soil around here. And it is very heavy, but it can definitely can be improved by mixing manure or compost into it.  Though I have to admit that that doing so is a lot of work because clay is no fun to dig in and turn over.  It almost seems easier to just build on top of it.

Edit:  I should add that I'm well aware clay can be an amazing growing medium but it just takes SO MUCH organic matter to get it to that point.

I should also add that I keep adding very expensive raised beds because I am far more likely to use them efficiently than if I just  plant in the ground. I think it's almost a mental thing. The define lines make it obvious that I should be using every square foot and not wasting the money that the beds cost.

Thanks for sharing your pictures. I always enjoy seeing other people's homesteads!

And I really think that second to last flower is a rudbeckia (black eyed Susan).  It looks like some of the fancier varieties I've seen around. I'm wondering if some critter just moved a seed from a cultivated variety out into your area.

I've never seen a gaillardia with such big petals.

I think Joylynn is spot on on everything else.

Hey May I don't think we're that much warmer? We just got lucky this year and didn't get as cold as people around us. We did get that sudden swing down to I think it was 14 Fahrenheit in April. That was pretty brutal.

And sorry my second picture has drunken sailor energy. I thought I'd gotten the whole fig in frame. Let's try again.

I'm not sure if it was this thread but somewhere on the Permies forum I got the idea to also lay branches of my Chicago Hardy Fig on the ground.  You have to steal a great idea when you find it!  

It's this fig's second winter.  It came back from the roots the first winter even though it was heavily mulched.  This winter I just weighed the easily bent branches down with rocks then covered them with leaves and wood chips.

Some branches definitely budded out above the ground this spring although not all the branches I attempted to cover were covered well enough and so some didn't make it.  Anyways, 3 days ago I got our first fig which my daughter promptly consumed.  I didn't keep records to know when we started getting fruit last year, but I'm almost certain it was later than now!

Also the thing is a monster this year! Since it's right in front of my house I think I'm going to have to trim some of the branches back just so they don't get over the gutters. There is a chance that I can't take responsibility because we did have a somewhat mild winter. We never got below zero fahrenheit, although we did have those crazy temperature swings in the spring.

Here are a few more pictures in case you guys aren't tired of looking at figs.  The first one was right after it started leaving out in the spring and the other two are right now.