Hello Everyone!
Although the weather around here has been warmer than it was a
couple of months ago, it's still quite cool, rather cloudy and we've had
a lot of rain. It's warm enough, however, to warrant "selection" of
desired plants over Keith's beloved "deep rooting herbs"--a task I
generally perform with my boys as kind of a family outing on late Sunday
afternoons.
Two nights ago I received a phone call from an elderly friend of
ours who lives in Kamloops--a city roughly three hours to the
northeast. Mr. Lunan has been working with fruit trees far longer than
I've been alive, and has come over to teach me how to prune and offer
advice for maximizing healthy fruit production. He affirms my efforts
to grow food without inputs, other than compost and compost tea, and
phoned to inquire about our blossoms.
My trees have been COVERED in blossoms, but there haven't been very
many bees out. Normally it's rather warm at this time of year and I can
actually hear the sound of beating insect wings from inside the house.
It's been too cold to warrant opening windows, so I've missed the sound,
and after reading Kirk's post on vanishing bees I wondered how much
fruit my trees would actually produce this year . . .
Last autumn I spread a LOT of compost around my trees. This was
before my compost bin disaster occurred, so I had some decent material
to work with. Now, even the sickly pink dogwood that lives in our front
yard has burst with a flurry of flowering I've never seen before. Our
magnolia had so many blossoms on it some of the branches actually BROKE
in the wind! (And we've had a LOT of wind!)
But now the blossoms have mostly fallen off. (The apple tree in our
backyard is an exception.) Mr. Lunan told me to mix a concoction of
baking soda and water, with a little bit of dish soap to act as a
surficant (Surfacant? If the root word is "surface," why does the
spelling change? Sometimes I HATE this language!) and spray my trees as
soon as the blossoms fell off. I expressed concern that this might have
a negative impact on the wasp colony that feeds on my insect pests, but
he said that it shouldn't be toxic to the predators.
Hmm . . . How can that be?
Having written this, I noticed that the plum trees and the apple
have ALREADY begun suffering from pestilence. Some of the tender, new
leaves are folded within the silky embrace of Archips argyrospila (a
moth) nests, while other leaves have been perforated by larval feeding.
My trees are probably healthier than they've ever been, but I decided to
make Mr. Lunan's concoction and give it a try.
I've learned to start spraying at the bottom of the tree and work
up, using a ladder, so that nothing drips on me. I heard NO bee wings,
but I did see the occasional fly while I was working. In all, I used
less than a liter of my homebrew insecticide and I'll be watching my
trees carefully to see what happens.
On the compost front, I've taken advice from Fritz and obtained
sawdust from my saintly father in law. Whenever I add something to the
pile, I cover it with sawdust and put the lid back on. Last Sunday when
I opened the lid to dump new kitchen scraps inside, I was rewarded with
a rush of heat . . . My composter is FINALLY hot!!! So thanks for the
suggestion, Fritz! It seems to be working now.
We're probably going to have to wait for planting because it's still
very cold and wet. I need to get the rotovator into the main part of
the garden, but it'll get stuck because the ground is still WAY too
soft. For the first time in two years, I'm battling equisetum arvense
in the main part of the garden. That's a pretty strong indicator that
beneath the surface the soil is VERY wet. I put four blueberry bushes
into the back yard near our peach trees (which are growing more
vigorously than any other tree on the property!), and while digging I
was pleased to discover that we've got at least 15 cm of good soil in
the garden before my shovel hit the clay muck that underlies the entire lot.
Progress is SO MUCH nicer to report than trouble!
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
"The Long Journey"
New Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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