Spring is Here...sort of.

It's March 25th. Spring was officially here 5 days ago. It was 36º this morning and we had a pretty good frost yesterday morning. Where's that global warming I've been promised?

Hopefully the frosts are just about done. My peach and pear trees are already covered with flower buds and a frost can damage the flowers. No flowers no fruit. Nature has lots of tricks up her sleeve to defeat me.



Even though it's still so cold, I've already started a few things this year. I ordered 3 more fruit trees and they came last week. I planted them the day they arrived. The new trees are a Fuji apple, Granny Smith apple, and a Hardi-Red Nectarine. That makes 9 total fruit trees in my little orchard behind my house. Three years ago, I planted 2 pears (one Bosc, one Bartlett), 2 peaches (one Gala, one Bell of Georga), and two "5-in-1" apples. The 5-in-one apples were 5 different varieties grafted onto one tree. It's supposed to produce 5 different varieties. I can't prune them right because I'm afraid I'll cut off a whole variety if I cut off a branch. I got a few golden delicious apples last year but nothing else. I'm just skeptical that these trees are going to really be worth much which is why I bought the two new apples this year.

When I put in my three new trees, I wanted to extend my existing irrigation system to these trees. When I first put in my trees, I buried poly pipe with a small sprayer at each tree. Over the last few days, I've been slowly digging some trenches and in a couple of days I'll get pipe in the ground.

We had a couple of warmer weeks already. Several days into the 50's. The soil temperature is right around 45º and some things are already growing. My rhubarb is starting to grow. I planted 4 heads last year but only 2 made it.

I also planted a short row of peas yesterday evening. I've got several rows of posts that I put in the ground over the past two years. Two of these posts support wire for my grapes, one supports wire for drip irrigation for a row of blackberries and sickly blueberries, and a few just give me a place to bring my irrigation pipes up out of the ground to attach drip irrigation for a couple of rows of asparagus, the rhubarb, and a matted row of strawberries.

Well, I had a spare row with posts that's been sitting empty. Since I haven't got anything permanent to plant there, I'm going to use the posts to support trellises for peas and cucumbers this year. The trellis for the peas is finished and the peas went in last night.


If you look at the picture of the above trellis, you can see a posted row of blackberries, two rows of grapes and my little orchard of fruit trees beyond that. The white pipes coming up out of the ground to the left of each row, right at the post, is attached to a buried piece of poly pipe for irrigation. A black soaker hose can be seen under the pea trellis attached to the irrigation riser.