Today was the first garlic chive harvest. These are growing in a half-barrel size, open bottom container. They are a bit affected with weeds, but not too bad.
Not bad, a crop in mid April!
Having harvested these, it will be easier to de-weed the container pretty thoroughly and mulch to prevent more weeds.
With care, this Chinese Chive colony should give another crop or two this year.
I bought this vine at a big box store with an orange sign, last year. You never know what you are going to get until you open the box, and it was sealed. Here's what it looked like when I opened it in May.
Plants are always a gamble, but I mean, really?
I decided not to return it, although I should have. I planted it in potting soil, kept it in shade to prevent burning of tender leaves, fertilized with house plant soil. Basically treated it as a somewhat abused seedling, In a way, it sort of was. I imagine these are tissue cultured starts.
In July, it looked like this.
I repotted. By about September, it looked like this,
I overwintered the vine in my vegetable garden. It's starting to grow.
The roots were good! and not root bound.
I planted it in the duck yard against the fence. It's at the top of a hill, facing west.
I think it should do fine there.
It's great to transition a plant through TLC and finally get it into its new home.
This was sort of an opps but sort of a discovery. I asked for some help, planting the hardy kiwi vine, against the fence. I told my helper to choose a spot, which turned out to be where there had been a dead clematis vine.
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The roots were still there. Here they are. Guess what? The roots have a living white center and green cambium layer under the bark! They are fleshy and flexible, not brittle like dead roots!
OK, time for some TLC. I potted it up, using fresh potting soil. Watered thoroughly. Now see what happens.
An aside, that area is the duck yard. And rose garden. It's great for growing lots of things, but filled with native (not Himalayan) blackberry. Which makes doing anything, even walking, much more difficult. I think all I can do is pull it out by hand, and try to dig out any roots, then be vigilant.
This tree was originally Methley. When I moved it from Vancouver to Battle Ground, I grafted on a Shiro Plum from the Vancouver yard too. Over the years, I added a Beauty Plum and a purple leaf plum for pollenation.
My Asian plums have a very low spreading, umbrella shape with long willowy branches. Most seem to droop quite low, giving deer a nice salad bar, plus making it difficult to mow.
I've never done a lot to shape and train this tree. Today I pruned back the lowest branches, shortened the long willowy branches, removed too-low, deer-tempting shoots and spurs, removed some crossing branches and cleared some of the center.
I left some newer branches longer, to tie down and train in the future.
No "Before" shot this time. I forgot.
Apples require cross pollination. Or the vast majority of them do. Apple varieties need to bloom together, to cross pollinate.
Varieties in bloom now can pollinate each other. The exception is that triploid varieties can receive pollen from the more usual diploids, but triploid pollen is not viable. So it usually takes two diploids, so they can pollinate each other as well as the triploid.
The overwhelming majority of apples are diploid. I mention it here because Gravenstein is triploid.
Blooming heavily now -
Gravenstein.
Redlove Calypso.
Redlove Era.
SummerRed
Zestar. This is sort of a "Wow" right now.
Also North Pole.
