GRAFTING WORKSHOP, APRIL 9, 2016, Springtown Farmden, New Paltz, NY, www.leereich.com/workshops LECTURE: LUSCIOUS LANDSCAPING, WITH FRUITS, APRIL 16, 2016, Hamilton College Arboretum, Clinton, NY PRUNING WORKSHOP, MAY 6-8, 2016, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP, MAY 14, 2016, Phillies Bridge Farm Project, New Palts, NY, register at www.leereich.com/workshops PLANT SALE, MAY 21, 2016, Springtown […]
Nice, sunny days and outside I go, to prune. Three steps to pruning blueberries. Cold weather, and inside I go, sowing seeds and trying for very early, greenhouse cucumbers.
Finally, my decades-long quest has ended; I have seen the blue poppy. Now I’ll try again to grow this plant, which collapses in hot summer weather.
I take a few cells (actually, short lengths of stem) from some pear trees for cloning into whole new trees. And then, on the other side of the farmden. Arnold’s Promise surprises me with blossoms — again!
Early spring greens are coming out in full force — in the greenhouse — without any help from me. Most abundant is claytonia but there’s plenty of mâche, my favorite, and too much chickweed, which I don’t eat, but could.
I decide to do something about the climate, the microclimate, to prevent fruit plants from blossoming too early. In the cool basement, a potted ‘Pakistan’ mulberry is the first of the subtropicals to act like winter’s over.
Once cured, my New York olive harvest was delectable, spurring me on to prepare the potted tree for a bigger harvest this year. Figs, in basement, still sleep, thankfully so.
I come to appreciate death as a sign of life — in flower longevity. Not so happy with aging in the greenhouse, though; new seedings will, with spring-like weather in there, soon offer fresh, young lettuce, arugula, and other salad greenery.
It Mite be a Pest Mites! Eek! A new pest in town (for me). Actually, the mites, which showed up on some newly rooted Meyer lemon cuttings, don’t really scare me, nothing like the scale insects that regularly turn up on some of my citrus. Chigger mites, scabies mites, dust mites, itch mites — […]
