Spring has officially arrived, and we’ve been busy freshening things up here at the ranch.  With a lot of help from our friends at Sower’s Sustainable Farms, we got the front flower bed replanted.  Last year we planted quite a few perennials, but between the ice storm and the chickens, it seems that few of them survived.  Learning from that, we planted a few more of the hardy survivors, along with a good assortment of flowering plants to add color to the bed.  The transformation is incredible.  It’s amazing how beautiful flowers contribute to a sunny disposition. 

 

As a bonus,  I’ve finally gotten around to planting the second row of trees in our orchard.  We planted several verities of pears (Southern Bartlet, 20th Century, Housi, and Orient) as well as two Flavor Grenade Pluots, and two Beauty Plums.  In our first orchard row, I had planted a few peach trees that I started from seed.  Though they were growing nicely, the fruit was very small and mainly seed.  Taking advantage of the trip to the nursery, I bought a few replacement peach trees (August Pride & May Pride) as well as a few fig trees (Celeste & Brown Turkey) to interplant between the peaches.   As Fig is easy to propagate, once these get established, I’ll take cuttings and start additional fig trees to place between all of the trees.

 

I’ve planted an excess of trees because the orchard is where the laying hens reside. They fly up into the fruit trees and nibble on most of the ripe fruit before I’m able to pick it. But that’s ok, we don’t each that much fruit, and we’re happy to exchange fruit for eggs.    They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago and the next best time is today. So even if we don’t get to enjoy much of the fruit, we’re happy knowing that the trees will keep producing for generations to come.

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