One last thing or two

If you are checking in with me and following my berry farm along please become a "follower" if you have the time. Everyone is watching my blog but I have very few followers! Believe it or not The Dept of Ag is following me as well.

There are several relief efforts all over the city to help the people of Joplin. Contact your church or local community center to see how you might help. It doens't alway have to be in the form of money.

See ya
Pam

The concrete garden area

Veggie garden or what I like to call my concrete garden. When I took soil tests from this area, the organic matter was 4.3 OMG how can this ground be so hard? Well I figured out that it is from years of driving over it. The ground is very compacted and will take some time to correct that problem. But the seeds had to go in. In my organic crop plan I have to develop crop rotations and green manures. So year 1 here we go.  

Cherry Bush

I don't remember if I showed you the Surecrop pie cherry bushes I planted. I only have three of them. They grow about 5 ft tall and about 5 feet wide. So no climbing on the ladder here to harvest. My son, Kyle, mulched these plants for me. Thanks a bunch sonny boy!

Seedless Mars Grapes

Ok year one.
Cut the vine back to one shoot with two buds. Check!
A month later, train the strongest growing shoot to grow up the string and leave the other shoot growing along the ground. Half check...
We have all the supplies for the single-curtain cordon system trellis but I lack the workerbees. Hopefully we can get this trellis up before everything is growing on the ground.
Notice the rich soil that is around the grapes in picture on and please overlooked the weeds for now!

Ok now that looks better

Do you remember the picture of the lonely rhubarb I took shortly after planting? Well, the plants look super now (except for the weed action growing around them.) I only have 5 of these plants growing for now. I am learning to be organic so with that I have to learn to enjoy these weeds as well. They add organic matter and keep the soil from eroding away.

Mulch complete on the gooseberries

I have two different kinds of gooseberries: Invicta and Pixwell. The invicta appears to have several thorns on them. But they look FAB............... I only lost 3 of these plants. Total count 117 gooseberries planted. I believe these might be my best seller... or at least I'm hoping so.

Let the mulching begin - Blackberry Plants

I hope my old back holds out here with all this mulching. But I wanted to share these pictures of the Blackberries. They look wonderful and are doing great. No signs of diseases or bugs in the field. The first picture is looking east of the blackberries. There are 120 plants in that grouping. Thank goodness that field is done. Now working towards phase 1 this week and hope to complete the rest of the field. I have 240 blackberry plants in all.