Saturday, June 19, 2010

Green and Growing Things.

A little over three weeks ago I posted a picture of the first of the first of the raised garden beds. That photo showed bed full of good soil, but empty of plants. Here are both raised beds, all assembled and planted! Putting in raised beds was way more work than I thought it would be, but they are beautiful, aren't they? Each one is 3' X10' of wonderfulness. And no, the plants didn't jump out of the ground that fast... they were all waiting to be put into the beds. The lettuce (under the shade cloth) has grown quite a bit and we've been eating it! I put bird/deer netting over the baby plants, too.

I've got WWWAAAYYY too many tomato plants, but some are determinate, so they will only bear one time... and I do have friends (and deer) who will have a share in the garden, I'm sure. Lots of nice, healthy peppers in the front box (they were indoors), but the Basil in the back box that was planted out two weeks ago needs more heat! We are still only getting mid 60s in the daytime, and down to high 40s at night. Maybe we are skipping Spring AND Summer this year ????



Back in March, my friend Janice and I took a class at OSU Extension: Grafting Fruit Trees.


We grafted several apple scions varities onto semi-dwarf rootstock, took them home, planted them in buckets for their first year, and waited. For a really long time... nothing happened. Too cold and wet. Eventually the buds swelled, and now they are leafing out. It looks like all five of my grafts took, I'm pretty excited about that.

Later in the Summer, before they go into the ground in the orchard this Fall, I will have to decide which shoot will become the actual 'tree' and which will be removed so the baby trees can get hardy enough to survive "in the wild" of the orchard. When I find out more about releasing the trees into the orchard, I'll let you know how it is going.

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