Fruit trees are extremely practical to have. The fruit can be left on the tree to be used at one’s convenience. An established tree can produce quite a bit of fruit. There may be so much fruit that they may start to rot before they are consumed. What better then to offer your neighbors, friends, and relatives some fresh fruit?
Botanical Interests is one of my favorite seed brands. They have a large and interesting collection of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. On top of that, their seed packets are artful and informative. Best of all, they have the scientific names of the plants. Their seeds are available online but I always prefer to pick them up. Around here, I know I can find the complete catalog at a Armstrong Garden Center. I went in looking for the ‘Dragon’s Tongue’ arugula seeds and came out with a few others. This is already displaying restraint.
The weather has warmed up for a couple of weeks now. Night temperatures have not fallen below 60 degrees. Now there is finally time to start more seeds. While it does not look time consuming, it was a bit of a surprise that this took a over an hour to do. One of the tasks was mixing up the 50/50 soil mixture of clay and peat moss. Then filling up the containers. Continue Reading
I picked up a new cactus to add to the collection. This is like a zipper cactus but a lot more spikier.
Keeping a garden is often times similar to running a multimillion dollar company. The difference is that with keeping a garden, often times you are both the consumer, local government, shareholder, CEO, CFO, R&D, logistics, and grunt. There are a slew of other differences. For fun, let us ignore those.
The garden generates a greater amount of utility when there is an infant to feed. Growing one’s own vegetables provides the assurance that food is as safe as it can be. Knowing that my vegetables are pesticide free is a comfort that I enjoy to a great degree.
The slope is filled with various trees. Left unchecked, the trees will grow in. The work performed three years prior which cut back the vegetation is no longer evident. The most aggressive grower on the slope is the pecan trees. Where they have been cut back, new trucks have grown in. They’ve grown quite tall and now was the time to start cutting them back. This time, I took the task in hand. With my trusty folding hand saw, I make my way up the grade. The trucks were not very big so the thought was that it was going to be a quick sawing session. Well, I learned something about pecan wood this day. Pecan wood is harder than I thought. Not only did it take a lot of work on a 1% humidity kind of day, the felled trees are heavy.
Being a recycle centric person, I salvaged the wood. I am not sure what I will do with it but I have a few of ideas. With the large trucks, they will either be used for smoking/grilling or as dirt retainers. The smaller branches will be used as stakes or kindling.
The Moro blood orange tree has been in decline for some time now. With fruit on the tree, the task of planting it into the ground was held off. It is time to plant the tree now that the fruit had ripen. Further, new leaves are growing. There is a rush to plant now as opposed to later when the shock of planting will disturb the leaves. Having lots of prep for spring to complete, planting the blood orange tree is a priority item.
When the compost bin is at capacity, this pile accepts the overflow. On this day, compost was needed.
There are usually grubs to pull out for Ernie and Bert (the resident Redfoot tortoises) to snack on.
In the compost pile, plants will try to grow. Usually I would find avocado pits sprouting. On this day it took me a little while to determine that this is a pineapple. Of the handful of pineapple tops that are in the compost pile, this one sprouted a new sprout. It has been planted. Now we wait to see if it will grow further.
