Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Fruit trees planted, working on berries

We planted the fruit trees this past weekend -- pics to follow. Unfortunately the nursery ran out of Peregrine, but we have PLENTY of trees.

We still need to plant the berries. I'm thinking of doing the blueberries in large containers for the time being (deal with the needed soil acidity) and running the canes alongside yard edge near our neighbor's driveway (planted several feet in of course).

We still need to do some sort of fence. I'm tired of people letting their dogs (on or off leash) run into our yard and not even cleaning up their dog's subsequent mess. We have a dog. We don't let our dog do that to other peoples' yards. Anyway, I also would like a fence so we can let Rigel out front safely off leash.

However, because we're on a corner lot, we can't do a solid fence/wall (though we may be able to fudge it a little because of the weird shape of our lot and the fact you can only legally make a right turn at our corner, not a left (so seeing traffic coming from the right is not so critical (assuming whoever's driving can stay on their side of the road))).

A typical picket fence just doesn't look right with the Spanish style. I'm trying to find examples of options online and in the surrounding neighborhoods. Any ideas? Maybe a combo stucco wall/ rustic wood thing?

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Fruit Trees

This past weekend, in between the Superbowl 10k run (including about 1 mile to and from) and Mel's Superbowl party I went to a free fruit tree and rose seminar at a local nursery that I'd actually never visited.

The seminar was awesome, focusing mostly on fruit trees (the main love of the speaker/teacher, Thomas) and what varieties to choose for our area and how to plant and prune them. Thomas was a wild man with the pruners. I ended up purchasing some more trees this week from that nursery, including one he'd pruned (I figure I can refer to it for reassurance when I get queasy about how much I'm pruning).

We'll end up with five 'clumps' of multiple trees in one hole -- the two figs, four apples (new ones are Anna and Beverly Hills), two peaches and two apricots (Gold Kist apricot and May Pride and Babcock peaches), four plums (Santa Rosa and Burgundy added), and four nectarines (Goldmine and one other whose name escapes me).

We're planning on planting this weekend. Our bareroot trees arrived the other day as well. They are smaller than the majority of the trees in pots, so they'll get planted south of the bigger trees (a tidbit I picked up at the seminar).

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