Dennis Barrow

Jay Angler wrote:

Dennis Barrow wrote:This spring I found an apple core in my green house I must have left last fall.  I planted the seeds in some pots and now have 4, 2 foot tall apple trees!!!
Now I need to figure out where I want them.

Well done! I hope you find good homes for them with other people if not on your own land!

One of the things I love about apples is that it's not too hard to spread the harvest based on ripening times. Ripening times can be shifted both by location of the tree, and the variety of apple. I have one that ripens early in late July. The next ripens in Aug, and the third ripens in September. All three trees produce far more than I could possibly use, so I'm working on a couple more trees that should produce late in our season and store better.

If Dennis' 4 trees produce too much all at once, grafting is a great permie skill to practice!

Jay, I have 5 apple trees now, 2 I am training espalier, 2 just out there that have never bloomed (three years in ground and 5 years old). and 1 crab apple.   One of my espalier trees blooms 3 weeks before any of the others, so I bought a crab apple, it didn't bloom this year.  I stopped at a crab apple near town and got a bunch of pollen. Hand pollinated the couple trees that bloomed, (different times).  Then we had a hard frost.  Lost all blooms.  No apples this year.

I have 3 plum trees.  Last year I got a couple bushels of plums.  This year, none.  That dang frost.

As far as to many apples?  No way!  We have 5 children and 14 grandkids.  A few years ago I lived near some friends that had a large orchard.  We canned apple sauce by the casefull.  Still have a couple quarts left.   I don't think I have ever had to much of any produce, well maybe zucchini.  lol  I have freeze dried a lot of zuc's this summer, zuc lasagne, zuc chips, zuc soup. etc.  My wife says NO MORE ZUCCHINI !!!   (till next summer). Wife just said she found a recipe for zuc salsa.

I purchased 6 comfrey plants a few years ago and now have a couple dozen.  Lots of green for the compost.  Also have native grass that grows over my drain field I cut that goes into the compost pile 3 or 4 times a year.

This spring I found an apple core in my green house I must have left last fall.  I planted the seeds in some pots and now have 4, 2 foot tall apple trees!!!
Now I need to figure out where I want them.

Judy J Johnston wrote:We couldn't keep up with the zucchinis last season, luckily they didn't get bitter at all...so we turned them into large thinnish slices that we used instead of lasagne pasta sheets. Worked really well

My wife has made lasagne twice this summer with our zuc's.  It really is good.

I am fortunate to have a freeze dryer.
Lots of squashes for short and long term storage.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:
I had some half grown cats show up a couple years ago.  I fed them and tamed them and they stayed and multiplied.  They’re all neutered now (5 of them!).  They keep the mice out of the house and all the outbuildings.  YAY.  

Our two cats are very thoughtful and bring the mice indoors for us.  Most they end up eating, leaving the stomachs for us or they let them go live in the house so they can have something to chase later.   lol

My hat is off to the builders of that ha ha fence in Scotland.  The fence was probably built by hand and took a long time, the dirt that was moved, by hand......  Makes me appreciate modern equipment.

Joao Winckler wrote:Scab hitting both the pine needle bed and the soil beds at the same time is telling though, sounds like a pH problem running through everything rather than the pine needles specifically. Bit of a nightmare to diagnose mid-season.

I am going to switch things up this next year.  Building a new raised bed just for the potatoes.  Will amend the soil so ph is better.
The raised bed won't be enough for what I need, but hope to get some larger spuds there.
I will still plant in a couple different areas so I hope to have an abundance for the next winter.

I am fortunate to have a conex that is critter proof, (unless someone leaves the door open).  I keep my bags of feed in there.
In my coop I have a metal garbage can I keep all the supplements in.
I built a garbage can feeder I have in the coop that holds 100 lbs of feed.  I know the mice help themselves, but my cats think it is a feeder for them now.

Tried growing potatoes in the pine needles again this year.  Only one plant flowered, the rest grew to about 18 inches and the plants died.  All the potatoes here were covered in scab.  Need to lower the ph, but in pine needles?  lol

The potatoes I grew in a couple of places in soil did the same, no flowering and all have or are starting to die.  There are potatoes in the ground, but not like previous years.   Haven't seen any scab on them yet, but have not harvested many of them yet.