Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Apricot Beats Plum

This year, the Blenheim apricot won the bloom off competition in the garden. The apricot buds broke on Valentine's Day.  Each year the Santa Rosa plum blooms 1st.  This year I was worried that the tree had died.  It's simply confused like the rest of us - mild winter, no rain, swamp pants season starting waaaaay too early.  The plum finally bloomed on February 23.  Strange.  I thought the date would have been one of the earliest because of such mild conditions.

There was a skiff of rain today.  Nothing really.  All the fruit trees in the garden have below surface irrigation.  I prefer to apply the water by hand to the surface allowing the water to seep in deeply to encourage the roots to push deep rather than pushing up to the surface for moisture.  I'll be switching to below surface irrigation soon to avoid evaporating precious resources.  Surface flooding will only occur when fertilizer is applied every 6 weeks or so.

I'm having problems posting using Googles device.  This post was finally created using the app which is very limiting. Anyone else having a similar problem?