This Week in the Garden: October 13, 2024
As often as possible, I think I'll start doing a weekly recap of any highlights and/or lowlights for things occurring (mostly) in and around the garden. [And as this blog has recently been transferred to its own website, some of these early post title dates will be a bit out of sync with the posting date shown on the website. Eventually, everything will sync.]
The week has been focused on framing the storage shed and putting together a neat playhouse/swing set. I'm about 5,000 screws and bolts of the way through probably 10,000 for just the playset. Not much gardening was done except to water a few plants, harvest a few vegetables, and plant two boxwoods that I had forgotten on the east side of the house...where someday I would like to have a bit of a Japanese-influenced garden. Just a nod to Japanese elements and plants you would find in a Japanese garden, probably not a full on re-creation.
We made another trip to one of the local orchards to pick apples (our burgeoning little orchard is still in its early years and pickings were slim this year). This particular orchard was quite large and there were tons of apples; however, I suspect that spraying was minimal (which is totally fine) it was just difficult to find good apples. We were in a section of golden delicious and the apples were very big but very few in number that weren't compromised in some way. With so many trees and apples though, we were able to fill two flats with good apples.
On the failure side of things, I haven't lost many trees I've planted through the years (well over 100) but there is a section of the yard where I was certain that some hornbeams would do well and form a bit of a screen...well, the ground is even tougher than I thought and at the bottom of a slight slope. So, some trees get very wet and some 20-30 feet away were very dry (despite toggling sprinkler coverage multiple times). I relocated three to another spot in the yard, two have died (and went quickly), one remains in place and looks fairly good. The ground in that area is an 'interesting' mix of heavy clay and sand that basically makes it like cement. So, it doesn't matter how big of a hole you dig (width) it basically acts like a non-porous bucket that just holds water and drowns the tree. [Update: All surviving hornbeams from this area have been moved to other parts of the yard/garden and we hope to see them flourish this coming season.]
Weedy Pete
