Monday, May 14, 2012

Mid-May Garden and Orchard Update


Liberty apple blossoming out, May 12, 2012
The apple blossoms buds have started to flower out. In the orchard behind the house planted by George Eaton many decades ago, the Rhode Island Greening is full of bloom. In the orchard by the road into the woods, the Liberty and Prima that I planted some 25 years ago, and the old mystery tree that most recently I've called a Shiawassee, also are filled with bloom. The Liberty (pictured above, two days ago) buds were then just out. The Baldwins are bare of bloom; the Golden Russet is late as usual and so it's impossible to tell what kind of blossoming it may do; the same is true with the Winesap and the Kingston Black. A few of the unidentified old trees also are full of bloom. Overall, it now looks as if it may be an average year for apples--not nearly as poor as I'd originally thought. The cider pressed from last fall's apples has gotten back to fermenting once the cellar warmed up above fifty degrees. I must keep an eye on it and see when the fermentation stops so that I can put half of it in the oak barrel to age for a few months before bottling. And that reminds me that I must get the bottles ready also. If I do it gradually instead of the day before, it won't seem to take me away from other pursuits.

The Shiawassee apple tree was identified as such first by the pomologist Herbert Wave about 25 years ago, based on a couple of ripe fruits and a description of the tree. But a few years ago John Bunker, the apple expert who works at Fedco, tentatively identified it (based on a few ripe fruits that I took to the Common Ground Fair) as Fameuse; and again last year he made the same identification. Looking over the descriptions of Fameuse and comparing them with Shiawassee, I agree with John and from now on will refer to that tree as Fameuse. About 20 years ago I grafted a couple of "volunteer" trees over to this Fameuse variety, with the result that I now have three of them. 

As usual, the vegetable garden is very slow at this time of year. The heavy rains last week washed a dozen or so of the onion and shallot sets out of the ground, and puddled up in the trenches where I'd planted potatoes. When the ground had dried out enough--yesterday--I stuck the sets back in. A few of the other sets had already started so send up their green shoots. The peas are growing, and the greens continue--slowly, with the spinach the most advanced. Three lettuce plants that overwintered under Remay (deliberately this year after last year's accidental discovery) have started to grow again and should be ready to eat in a few weeks. The tomato seedlings I planted are growing very slowly in the cool, damp weather. 

My neighbor Ken Kraul returned the pole saw I loaned him last winter. I saw him trying to dig out thistle from his lawn and we spoke a little while about such efforts. It's good to see such optimism in a young man. Next week I'll have to start reinforcing the fences. This year I may try some rebar as fenceposts to get added height against the deer. 

Thursday, May 3, 2012

First Pink

Pomologists name the various stages of budding out for the blossoming apple trees. Today I noted the "first pink" stage in the most advanced cluster of Liberty blossoms. In a year that still looks as if there won't be very many blossoms, Liberty's annual bearing habit is welcome. I took a picture of the "first pink" stage (left) and predict that despite the warm early spring, the blossoming (such as it is) will come at the usual time, on account of the recent cooler weather. I did find a few blossoms on the Prima tree, but it's an off-year for this one, as it is for most of the ones on this land. I recall reading somewhere, years ago, that after a winter unkind to producing blossoms, the trees had a tendency all to go on the same off-on biennial cycle, which was not desirable--it meant a large harvest one year (too large for me) and then a paucity the next.  


In the orchard at this time of year, before the grass and weeds grow up, wild strawberries blossom. Some years I can find them before the birds and other creatures do, and they are quite delicious, confirming what Thoreau said about the superior taste of wild fruit over the domesticated kinds. In the photo at left, the yellow pollen is visible; in the background, another strawberry blossom (blurred in the photo) is just opening up. The earliest flowers, Thoreau wrote in his journal, were the simplest or most primitive in structure, blooming (he wrote) in the least likely places; but apart from the skunk cabbages that is not the case hereabouts. On my daily walk I saw one or two quaker ladies (the flowers), the vanguard of what will be a ground cover for a few weeks along the road soon enough. Leaves of other flowering plants are pushing up now, also. The warblers seem to be in retreat at the moment--the cooler weather may be holding them back. I'd hoped to hear the hermit thrush this week but will probably have to wait until Sunday when it's supposed to warm up. I'm hoping to get a good recording--and Sunday evening is a good time to try, as there'll be less noise from motorboats and other vehicles in the far distance.



The skunk cabbages continue growing in the night (photo above; compare with the photo from April 30). Thoreau remarked in his journal at the end of April in 1852 that he saw skunk cabbage leaves six inches across. Most of those that I see are not that far advanced, but I did take a picture of one that had flattened out from its curl and was about nine inches across, this afternoon (right). 

Creative Commons License
This work (all photos) by Jeff Titon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Spring Planting Update

Now in early May, I'm glad to have gotten in the peas, spinach, beets, lettuce, and mustard seeds during last month's warm and dry spell, because the weather's turned cool and damp, typical for this time of the year. Everything planted on April 13 and April 20 has emerged, save for the beets, which usually are slow to show themselves anyway. But all are slow-growing, also typical for this time of year. This afternoon I hoed the tiny weedlings on the sides of the rows of the emerging seedlings. Then I planted out a couple of thirty-foot rows of onion and shallot sets, enough to eat through the summer and most if not all of the autumn. The onion sets are the Stuttgarter variety, an excellent keeping variety, but variable in quality from Fedco, and this was not one of their better years. The shallots the same--some had rotted, others were mildewed--but I got enough of the two shallot varieties (Picasa and Yellow Moon) to plant 3/4 of the row, and filled in the rest of the row with red onion sets (sweeter, milder, but they don't store well). As an experiment, because the soil looked good, I decided not to put any compost or organic fertilizer into the rows. I may regret that.

Every year it gets harder to scrabble around on my knees for this planting, as the sets need to be placed (not dropped, as with seeds) just so, and the soil mounded around them just so. Knee pads help some, though it won't be until tomorrow that I can feel whatever I may have done to my knees this afternoon. If I overdo it, they can feel spongy or painfully twingy. Probably this is arthritis, combined with accelerated wear due to old damage done from competitive downhill skiing when I was a youngster, part of it in the days before safety bindings, when twisted knees and pulled ligaments were my rewards for bad falls. Luckily, I had no broken legs then, but I can remember an occasional cast anyway, and lots of Ace bandaging. I recall having trouble getting up the stairs one particular day when one of the schoolteachers who didn't know of my problem thought I was dawdling and got behind me and commenced yelling at me and pushing me along, which I didn't appreciate and must have told her so. At any rate, I wound up in the principal's office; but after my explanation, along with a note from my parents, the principal determined it had been a misunderstanding, advised that I should get started early when I needed to use the stairs, so I wouldn't be late for class; and much to my chagrin informed the entire school of my temporary disability over the intercom during homeroom period. At that time I had a crush on a sandy-haired girl who spent most of her free time sitting at her desk and drawing horses, and guessed that I could not expect any sympathy from her--and I was right. I might as well have been a horse with a lame leg for all she cared.