Yea, I suck at posting new items to this. The trees are doing alright, although the Newton Pippin has had some leaves eaten off from the upper half. There was a while in the late summer that there were tons of beetles all over the place. They ate the snot out of my weeping cherry tree. In the middle of my tiny home orchard I planted two pumpkin plants this spring. They have done very well. On Saturday, my wife and I harvested five of them. There are still plenty on the vines. That includes what we see as carving pumpkins. Many of the ones that did grow are fairly small. Also on Saturday, I weeded a bunch of the crab grass away. Most of the section I devoted to my apples has a thick layer of crab grass over it. Not much I could do about it unless I had way more time to devote. With it being football season and coaching the JVs, it just didn’t happen. I made it happen this weekend finally though.
Next on the agenda is to get some fencing around the trees themselves. I have seen 20 or more deer in the yard behind us last winter, so I need to ensure that I didn’t pay and care for trees that will be dead stumps by spring. I contacted Terry Moore and asked him about fencing. He told me that I could use fencing 5ft high and only do about 2ft in diameter. Next spring we are hoping to fence in part of the yard which will have the trees and some sort of garden. I want to grow more pumpkins and add some watermelon or something else fruity while my wife wants to grow some beans and tomatoes. Ideally, we would fence the whole yard, but it’s a bit expensive to put in an acre of fencing!
cottrellorchard 