Cold enough for peas.

Today is the last day of a week's vacation at home. Wife says it was 11 days. Felt like more. So this is the last chance I've got to do some more with the garden while I'm off from work but there isn't much to do.

We're on our 9th day of spring and the mercury wasn't out of the 30's at 10:00 this morning.
I think the Nobel people really jumped the gun on giving my buddy Al Gore a prize for global warming. But I guess it makes up for the prize he should have won for inventing the internet.

I did plant another row of peas today. They like the cold. This is the first row of anything in the actual garden. Below you can see the string I used to keep the row straight.



I went to buy some fruit tree spray yesterday. There's a product called...wait for it..."Fruit Tree Spray". It includes a fungicide and a couple of insecticides. Fruit trees need to be sprayed several times during the growing season and the first spray is supposed to be now. One of the insecticides listed in Fruit Tree Spray is Carbaryl. Carbaryl causes "thinning" of peaches. Thinning means some of the fruit falls off.

Last year, I used this stuff and it just happened that all my peaches fell off the peach trees in June. When this started to happen last year, I took a peach over to my friend Russ. Russ has a masters in plant science, spent 3 years doing research on peach trees, and worked for several years as a agricultural extension agent for the state university. If anybody could figure out what was happening to my peaches, Russ could.

"What's this" I asked as I handed him a little peach that had fallen off the tree.
"That's a messed up peach"
"Yeah, but why?"
"Because whoever's growing this doesn't know what he's doing."
"What made them fall of the tree?"
"Probably June Drop."
"What's June Drop?"
"That's when peaces drop off the tree in June."
"What causes June Drop"
"Don't know."

I don't know what I'd do without Russ. Well now, I'm wondering if this stuff was the problem or at least part of it. I think I'll find something else to use to spray my trees this year.