Tag: pruning

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On May 4, 2015

How I love this time of year! The weather has just been amazing! The plants are coming out everywhere – I love it!

One of the biggest pieces of news around the homestead this week is the number of apples on the apple trees! I cannot believe this! We have had these trees since we moved in here, and while they have made one or two apples a year, it has been truly pathetic. This year, as you may remember, I pruned them heavily. I can’t say that made all the difference, but I have to believe it made the bulk of the difference. There seems to be hundreds of tiny apples now growing on the trees. Check it out:

Growing Apples

The other big news of the year is my almost-firm decision that I am not going to put out a full garden this year. I have decided that there is wisdom in letting your soil rest periodically, and with us having just converted to a new type of gardening, this is a fine year to let it rest. I have already ordered some plants, and I have already planted some things, so anything that grows from that will be permitted to grow, but we aren’t going to do anything else. Basically, this means we will have garlic, some greens, some popcorn, and sweet potatoes. The rest will be left to rest. (I sure hope we can find someone with plenty of fresh tomatoes this year!)

One of the nice things happening in the garden right now is the portable chicken coop is allowing our chickens to fertilize the garden like mad. 😀 We are moving it around the garden regularly, and they are not only eating any grass that remains there, but they are stirring it up, fertilizing it, and helping to prepare it for next year.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On March 16, 2015

It is often said here, as in other areas, if you don’t like the weather, wait a day. It will change. This week has been a real example of that. Within a one week time period we went from very low temperatures and greater than a foot of snow on the ground to a fantastically warm 72° F. Welcome to spring in Kentucky!

I was on the road for my job last week, and was anxious to get back home for a number of reasons, one of which being to check the winter sown vegetables. I am very excited to report that many of them have sprouted! Check these pictures out:

Calbrese Broccoli Sprouts

German Chamomile Sprouts

So far I see sprouts in the Romanesco Broccoli, Purple Broccoli, German Chamomile, Purple Cabbage, Calabrese Broccoli, Early Jersey Cabbage, Forage Kale, and Russian Kale winter sown containers. Woot! Now to see if they survive the coming cold spell, though I suspect they will.

One thing I am excited about this year is my Back to Eden garden. While I can’t speak to the success of the garden here yet, I can tell you that I will be able to get my garden out much sooner than I would if I were planting traditionally. Our ground is absolutely saturated. Even so, I can walk all over these woodchips and not feel as if I am sinking in at all. This is wonderful!

Despite the rain on Saturday, I decided to go ahead and plant some brassicas and lettuces:

Kale, Cabbage, and Broccoli

Lettuce in the Raised Bed

I also decided to spend some time pruning my fruit trees this weekend. I received some nice pruning equipment for Christmas, which I have been wanting to use, and I am several weeks behind the latest date I wanted to do this, but the weather has not been cooperating at all. Here are the tools:

Pruning Tools

Let me tell you – that saw is sharp! Don’t ask me how I know that. However, if you see me over the next few days, you will know how I know. 🙁 If you want to see what happened, you can check it out, but don’t click on the link if you can’t handle seeing pruning wounds. Seriously, it’s not that bad, but you still may not want to click on it.

I pruned two apple trees and a cherry tree, and I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. Here are a few before and after shots of the apple trees:

Apple Trees – Before Pruning

Pruned Apple Tree

So the point in pruning back so much is to shape the tree as I want it to be shaped, and to limit the height to something usable/reachable for me. I also want to provide plenty of air flow and sunshine. While they look a little bare right now, I am expecting them to fill on out as the spring and summer move forward. If I have done the job right, we should see better apples this year off these trees.

As you can see, I still need to clean up the branches, but that can wait. I plan to cut up that wood to use for smoking food later in the year. There are also still a few branches on the second tree (the last picture) that need trimmed, but I need my pole pruner to reach them. I will hopefully get to that today.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On December 29, 2014

Wow! I logged in today and noticed it has been nearly a month without a post! Needless to say, the last month has been very close to chaotic continually, and what little time I have had has been spent on living, not writing about living. 🙂

Despite the chaos, I have had a pretty productive month or so around the homestead, mostly in planning for the upcoming gardening year. By next week I should be able to share the plans for my garden for 2015, which will be a very different garden than any I have planted before. You have already read of the Back-to-Eden style gardening change that has been made, but I am also planning on a much wider use of companion planting this year in order to get the most out of the garden. More to come on this soon.

I was pleased this Christmas to get a few new yard tools that I have been wanting, including a pole pruner, a pruning saw, and pruning shears. The pole pruner is the only one of the three I have used yet, and it did great. We have a couple of pecan trees on our property, and one of those has branches that stick out above the power lines coming into our house. Twice since we have lived here those branches have caused and issue with our power after a winter storm and both times cost a considerable amount of money to fix. I was able to safely trim the branches back for the most part where they didn’t extend over the power lines. There is still one troublesome branch that is just a bit too high for me, but I may try to trim it back using a ladder on a warmer day.

The other pruning tools have a more interesting purpose. I plan on pruning back my three fruit trees this year: two apple trees and a cherry tree. I have been learning quite a bit about pruning, and I think I am ready to give it a shot. More to come on this as well.

Finally, I have been blessed to already receive numerous seeds for the next growing cycle. Today I am hoping to take some macro photographs of the seeds to share their amazing beauty with you. Who would have thought a seed could be beautiful? Just wait and see!

Oh, did I already say finally? Hmm – I have one more thing. 😀 First, let me begin by thanking those who saved babyfood/small jars for me. They have come in so handy. Several of you have asked what I am using them for. I grow popcorn, and I selectively save the seed from the popcorn in order to grow better popcorn next year. In order to do this faster and better, I need a controlled environment for the popcorn so that I can ensure all the corn has the same moisture ratio. Moisture is a key component of popcorn’s popping ability, and if I am going to truly save the best each year, I need to be sure the moisture is the same during the popping trials, which commence soon. So, here is a picture of the filled jars:

Popcorn Jars

Even though I have enough of these for this year, I still need about 300 more jars, so if you or someone you know is feeding a baby babyfood, I would love to have the jars. Even better are pimento jars or any other jar that holds about 4-6 ounces. Bigger or smaller also work, but I don’t want anything larger than a half-pint.

365 Days of Me