Thursday, April 15, 2010

Facing Reality... Again
 
After much discussion we have decided to face reality and abandon the notion that blueberries and grapes were a good crop here. The land is in the shade most of the day and being at the base of the hill, is also too wet to work until late June. The previous owners did a great job of bringing in good soil and planted 48 blueberry bushes, several varieties of grapes and lots of different fruit trees, most of which were pushed up by the swelling wet in Spring. We'd walk out there and the trees would be pushed up out of the ground lying on their sides.

Last summer it looked as tho we might get a good crop of blueberries, but with them came an equally good crop of weeds. Weeding those bushes was more than I was capable of doing, (recovering from knee surgery) and mulch didn't help much.










The bowlful here represents the harvest we had last year. One Asian pear (mysterious that the previous day there were at least 20 ripe beauties and when I went to pick them, only one remained...not one on the ground either. Hmmm.) and a bowl of berries. They were not very juicy or sweet, but rather grainy and loaded with bitter disappointment.

The grapes were not seedless, and I am not saying they ever got ripe...before the beetles destroyed the leaves.

Dave had a terrible time mowing around these plants too, as mower sunk into the soggy ground. Once we found that our neighbor across the way had mowed our field with his tractor, a subtle hint that we were not being good stewards and had a big weed patch for their scenic pleasure. OK we get it.

So we had our man Mike tear out the bushes and vines and till the soil. We are going to let it go to grass and see how else we can use this space in the future.

Now that I sound all wise and realistic, let's bring in the silly. Yesterday I fell in love with this Bush Goliath tomato plant. I had to bring it home. It is in a five gallon pot and weighs about 40 pounds soaking wet. It already has blossoms on it, so can big red tomatoes be far behind? I am the tomato eater here and have tried growing tomatoes in various spots around the yard, but the sunniest location has also been the highest traffic areas. But this time (famous last words) I am going to find the perfect sunny place to put Goliath and woe be it to the fella who says it's in the way.

5 comments:

  1. Hope springs eternal in the gardener's heart! Fixing last year's mistakes seems to be what it's all about--we keep coming back for more, don't we?

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  2. I'd love to do fruits in my garden, but the Texas heat would sure do them in. We don't really have any trees to provide any sort of shade from the brutal summer temps. I considered a hanging strawberry plant and still haven't ruled it out. I would like to try for an herb garden this year though.

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  3. I swear I didn't touch the Asian pears but I would keep a sharp eye on those tomatoes. Hope you can keep the critters from lunching on them.

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  4. Life as a gardener is never dull! We had something similar happen to our pears one year. One afternoon the pears were there, the next morning, no trace. Now, our neighbor was an electrician, and his work crew would park their personal cars next to my tree each day, so .... Well, I could be wrong. At least I got out of making gallons of pear chutney that year!

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  5. nice post,appreciate your post

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