I put out a couple of bales of hay and topped off the minerals for the cattle earlier today. I’m down to 6 remaining bales (that’s the bad news) but they have really backed off of it as the fields begin to green up (the good news). We’ve had three bail to the greener pastures to the west (my neighbors place) so they’ll not be munching on the dwindling stock over here.
I was going to gather up some composted manure to work into the garden soil, but decided instead to go with some decomposed wood from a fallen Hackberry tree.
Two trips to the ‘corpse’ of three buckets per trip was enough to enrich the organic material in four 4×12 planting beds. I turned it in some with a shovel and will give it a month or so of rest before i take my small Honda cultivator to it. I still need to move two more beds from the south (abandoned) side of the garden to this side.
I’ve collected another clue on the mysterious lone pear tree in the front pasture: Its bloom time.
It was a good thing that I thought to cut scion wood from these trees last week. Had I waited even as much as a few days it would have been past the time when it would be a viable grafting limb. Those cuttings are in my fridge.
As educational as this all might be, I may have the names of pear tree I planted backward! I won’t be certain that I have them named correctly until they produce fruit. The near term hurdle on the pear trees is concurrency; The trees that I planted will all need to be in bloom at the same time or I’m only going to get one variety to bear fruit.
Speaking of a single variety, one of my plum trees died and I’ve got one left. It is a ‘Santa Rosa’ plum and self pollinating. I saw a couple of blooms on it last year but no fruit. Today it was absolutely loaded with blossoms.
