Monday, June 8, 2009

All my M'fers put your garden forks in the sky

Dear Blogospere, I hope you're all doing really well and having a good summer. Getting on what everyone else has said I think this blog is a really good idea and I hope it gets put to good use. Like everyone else too I'm curious about the summer state of the farm and in my time away the ideas for the place are flooding in. I spent some time working with a pro composter and orchardist this May which was great and it made me think of all the mistakes I've made on various farm projects, which I really think is the beauty of the place because we have such rare creative control to experiment and play with things.
I'm really interested in how the orchard is doing. It seemed to be coming to life this spring like I've never seen it. Some ideas for caring for it so that it does even better if they haven't been done already is to weed-whack with the hand sithes all of the weeds around their base (within the fence is probably good). Also spreading compost in that area should help reduce weeds and give the tree some good juice (use your best judgement with the compost, it was looking questionable in May but we tried to make it better by adding a lot more carbon and turning it, feel free to not use it, more time letting it decompose won't hurt it and the trees don't absolutely need it I think). In general the trees should be paid attention to these days because we want to know early if they have trouble with pests and animals. Also, check if they're showing any fruiting signs.. that would be very exciting. Maybe reading a thing or two about pruning and thinning would do some long term good for the orchard (tall apple trees are harder to manage and harvest and pruning can also make for bigger and juicier fruit).

cool, well enjoy it, I imagine it's really beautiful right now.
Toe.B

1 comment:

Miriam said...

last summer I'm pretty sure we got a few sour cherries. also, don't forget about the peach tree near the community garden!