Garden

While some of the young fruit trees are starting to take off, some of the others like the four pears in the foreground are still sulking.

Some of the plants are starting to put out significant growth. Cages for the tomatoes were made from concrete reinforcing wire. Some of the rest of the 150′ roll was used to create trellises to support vining plants.

The lettuce is just about ready to have leaves picked.

Corn is being planted every two weeks so that we will have a long harvest if it works out.

After several days of shoveling and hauling, the mulch pile has disappeared. Hopefully, it will enrich the soil, keep weeds down, prevent erosion in the winter and reduce the need for water in the summer months.

There was enough mulch to cover the strip between the driveway and the fence. The mulch made a big improvement in how it looks.

Meanwhile a couple of the baby apple trees actually flowered.

I got some benchgraft apple trees late in the planting season. Here you can see the grafted varieties starting to grow — and also some growth on the rootstock that needs to be removed.

The weeds in the orchard area have been removed and the trees and berries along the fence are visible again.

Behind the fence at the bottom of the hill is 20 yards of mulch to use for the orchard area.

And note that weed barrier fabric was placed around the raised beds which been planted. Tomatoes, pumpkin and squash had been started indoors several weeks before.

Thanks to help from our neighbor Charlie and his son Tyler, the new beds were moved from the parking area to the garden.

We had a huge pile of planter mix delivered to fill up the new raised beds. Either my calculations were off or the initial delivery was a bit on the short side. A second delivery was needed to finish the job.

Once the beds were filled, the drip system had to be completed. Decided to try several different approaches this time to compare the results.

Looking down the row from the other side, you can see that the trees are actually leafing out.

The stakes on the hill are marking the proposed locations for the second row of the orchard.

And of course, the weeds seem to be growing a lot faster than the trees.