Mulching Fruit Bushes

If you remember my blog last year about using wood shavings -

http://mountaingardengleanings.blogspot.ca/2011/09/shavings.html , one of the uses were for a groundcover.  This year, we decided to buy some landscape fabric and cover the rest of the area in the back that is home to our small fruits (grapes, raspberries, saskatoons, blueberries, rhubarb and kiwi).  The newspapers I used last year are still working in the one row I tried but they probably won't last for many years.  With the landscape cloth and the shavings, I hope to have very little weeding back there.

First thing we did was do a good weeding and raked the area so it was basically level.

You can see the weeds between the grape arbor - they do have a tendency to get away from us.  Hopefully this will be the solution to that problem.

The fabric we bought allows water through it so we laid the drip hoses on top of the fabric and shavings so we can monitor it.  We found the drip line did not work well as the tiny holes would plug up so we added nozzles that mist the row.  We cut holes in the fabric where the plants were growing and then covered the whole thing with a thick layer of shavings.

We worked on one length at a time and kept the shavings away from the edge so we could overlap the next length. 

When we finished one row, we continued onto the next.  At the ends we place slabs of wood to hold the shavings in and to cover the ends of the fabric.  That way we can extend the area if we need to.  We are thinking about added some raised beds for strawberries and such and think that we will do it in that area of the yard.

We hauled many, many loads of shavings on the van and the job took us several weeks to complete but it was worth the end product.  Doesn't it look nice?  It seems nice to as we got a variety of shavings - fir, pine, spruce and cedar.

Next year we will redo the row I did last year with the newspaper and continue out that side of the patch.  :)

Fruit Trees in Bloom

Here's what's blooming in our yard right now.  The apples blossoms are opening.  The buds are dark pink but when the blossoms open they are so pale, they are almost white.



We have a number of varieties of apple - some early and some late but they all seem to bloom at the same time.

On sunny days, (which we have had few of this spring) the bees are buzzing in and amongst the blossoms.

Here we can see one busy bee making the rounds.

The saskatoon bushes are full of blooms as well.  We were given the bushes last year and they had a few blossoms but did not amount to much.

If you are from Saskatchewan, as I am, one of your favorite pies is saskatoon berry pie.



The blossoms are quite a bit smaller and scragglier than the fruit trees but I'm looking forward to harvesting them if I can get them before the birds do.

Here we can see the apricots forming where just recently there were masses of flowers.

The pear tree has never been so full of flowers since we moved here.  I guess the pruning is paying off.

You can see that the pear blooms are white and the petals are longer and farther apart than the apple blossoms.

If even half of the blossoms set fruit, we will have to thin the fruit dramatically.

Personally, I think that peach blossoms are the prettiest.  They have already finished blooming and will hopefully set fruit.  They are the touchiest trees we have.  The first year here, there was a late frost and it damaged the peach blossoms so no one in the area had any peaches.

We have several peach trees and the blooms are all different shades of pink.

This is my favorite tree as the blossoms look so rich.  Our peach trees are not all doing well.  One of them split last year from poor pruning and high winds.  With others we have had to prune away dead branches.

This tree has much paler pink blossoms than the above trees. 

Here are two peach trees with quite different shades of blossoms.  You can see that the first tree has been pruned severely because of dead and broken branches.  Hopefully it will survive.