Some flowers. 4.25.2021

 Some nice Spring flowers are blooming.  In addition to lilacs, there are the apples of course.  And this Prairie Fire crabapple, that I planted about 8 years ago.

Someone on the old GardenWeb site said it wouldn't grow here.  Obviously wrong.  I don't believe everything I read.

An Iris germanica and some Camassia.

I like the Camassia because they are native, and because deer and rabbits don't eat them.

Some Hyacinthoides.  In town, these are invasive.  Here at my country place, they have a hard time establishing.  I think herbivores eat them.  A few clumps survive.

An Iris florentina, in the woods border.  It gets almost no care - no watering and only weeding when I can.  These, and the I. germanica, are much earlier than most bearded iris.

 

Potato Plants, Grown from Seeds or Planted Early from Saved Tubers. 4.25.2021

In about February, I planted sprouted potato tubers that I had stored in the garage.  These were mostly very small tubers, which is why they didn't get eaten.  They were mixed varieties, mostly a yellow flesh, a russet, and I'm not sure.  There were some frosts after that, and I did protect them by covering with a tarp, when that happened.

 

 

The plants are various sizes.  A couple did not grow, but most did.  Some are quite vigorous.  One feature of planting in trenches, is that moles sometimes dig across the trench wall, burying growing potato plants.  I don't recall seeing that before.  As they grow above the sides of the trenches, I'll fill the soil back into the trench.  That way, voles don't get at the growing potatoes, and they don't need much if any watering, and I don't have to haul soil in to hill them up.

Since I planted some more potatoes last week, which have not yet emerged, it will be interesting to see if these are earlier or larger, compared to potatoes that I planted much later.

 

Here are the Clancy "True Potato Seed" potato plants that I planted in trenches a few weeks ago.  There were also a couple of frosts, which I treated as with the other potatoes.  Also, a few buried by moles, but not many.  I uncovered a couple.  These still have the fencing in place, that I used so the tarp would not smash the little plants.  These are actually almost as big as the potatoes from old tubers that I planted weeks earlier.  Bigger than some.  Some are smaller - there is a lot of variability.

Notching to Encourage Branch Growth. 4.25.2021

 Akane is an excellent apple with a good "Jonathan" flavor, bears well, every year.  Unfortunately, I had let my Akane apple tree grow taller than I wanted.  I could have cut back the top, allowing new, lower branches to grow.  That would have meant no crop this year.

So I cut notches at points below buds where I want new branches to grow.  In a year or two, I can cut the bigger branches as the new lower branches fill in.

Now I'm thinking I should notch above those additional buds, for more branching.  

I never did this before.  Looks like it works just fine.

Sad Looking Tomatoes from Wall 'o' Water. 4.24.2021

 Well, that was a mistake. The water filled teepees to keep the tomatoes warm appear to have worked too well and cooked those plants.  &^%$#!!

A couple don't look too bad but that Lemon Boy looks fried. Oh well.  I have backup plants of several varieties.  Those can go into the ground in a week or two.

Drip Irrigation System. 4.24.2021

 I don't know what I'm doing, but that hasn't stopped me before.  Here is part of the drip irrigation system I've been installing.  So far, I have it in the raised beds and a couple of containers.  It seems to take about 6 hours to provide an inch of water, which I expect to need every few days during the summer.  I can turn it on in the late evening, and return in the early morning to turn it off.

This took a few days, not too bad.  Next is the tomato bed, then the mini fruit trees and finally, the sweet corn bed.